TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Wednesday, April 17, the 108th day of 2024. There are 258 days left in the year. On this date in:
1790:
Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s Founding Father Americans, passed away at age 84. A man of many talents, Franklin was a scientist, printer, publisher, author, inventor and diplomat. He helped draft and signed the Declaration of Independence.
1861:
The state of Virginia voted to secede from the U.S., becoming the eighth state to join the Confederate States of America.
1961:
A group of 1,400 Cuban exiles, financed and trained by the CIA, landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to launch what was a failed attempt at overthrowing Fidel Castro.
1964:
Ford Motor Co. revealed the Mustang to the public at the New York World’s Fair. The vehicle also debuted on Ford showrooms across the U.S. With a starting price tag of $2,300, Ford sold almost 400,000 of the Mustangs in its first year of production.
1969:
Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of assassinating Sen. Robert Kennedy on June 5, 1968. He was sentenced to death, but it was later commuted to a life sentence in 1972.
1970:
The crew of Apollo 13 returned safely in the Pacific Ocean after a ruptured oxygen tank disrupted a planned mission to the moon.
1972:
Women were allowed to compete in the Boston Marathon for the first time. Nina Kuscsik was officially recognized as the first ever women’s champion with a time of 3:10:26.
1975:
The Cambodian Civil War ended as the rebel communist forces of the Khmer Rouge captured the capital Phnom Penh and Cambodian government surrendered to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. Pol Pot immediately implemented his policies, resulting in a genocide that killed close to two million people.
1993:
Los Angeles Police Officer Laurence Powell and Sgt. Stacey Koon were convicted of violating Rodney King’s civil rights by a federal jury. They were involved in the brutal beating of King, which sparked civil unrest and riots across the city. Powell and Koon were both sentenced to 30 months in prison.
2013:
An ammonium nitrate explosion at the West Fertilizer Co. in West, Texas, led to the deaths of 15 people and injured over 160. While the ATF had reported that the fire which caused the explosion was deliberately set, no one was named or arrested.
2014:
The first discovery of an Earth-sized planet orbiting the habitable zone of another star was confirmed by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. The exoplanet, designated as Kepler-186f, is 580 light years away from Earth and orbits the red dwarf star Kepler-186 in the constellation Cygnus.
2014:
Novelist Gabriel García Márquez died of pneumonia at the age of 87 in Mexico City. Widely regarded as one of the greatest authors of the 20th century, García Márquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his novels and short stories.