TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Saturday, April 24.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
the United States launched an unsuccessful attempt to free the American hostages in Iran, a mission that resulted in the deaths of eight U.S. servicemen.
ON THIS DATE
In 1800, Congress approved a bill establishing the Library of Congress.
In 1877, federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North’s post-civil War rule in the South.
In 1915, in what’s considered the start of the Armenian genocide, the Ottoman Empire began rounding up Armenian political and cultural leaders in Constantinople.
In 1960, rioting erupted in Biloxi, Miss., after Black protesters staging a “wadein” at a whites-only beach were attacked by a crowd of hostile whites.
In 1962, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieved the first satellite relay of a television signal, between Camp Parks, California, and Westford, Massachusetts.
In 1967, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when his Soyuz 1 spacecraft smashed into the Earth after his parachutes failed to deploy properly during reentry; he was the first human spaceflight fatality.
In 2003, U.S. forces in Iraq took custody of Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister. China shut down a Beijing hospital as the global death toll from SARS surpassed 260.
In 2005, Pope Benedict
XVI formally began his stewardship of the Roman Catholic Church; the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said in his installation homily that as pontiff he would listen to the will of God in governing the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics.
In 2009, Mexico shut down schools, museums, libraries and state-run theaters across its overcrowded capital in hopes of containing a deadly swine flu outbreak.
In 2013, in Bangladesh, a shoddily constructed eightstory commercial building housing garment factories collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people.
In 2019, avowed racist John William King was executed in Texas for the 1998 slaying of James Byrd Jr., who was chained to the back of a truck and dragged along a road outside Jasper, Texas; prosecutors said Byrd was targeted because he was Black.
Ten years ago: Pope Benedict XVI offered an Easter Sunday prayer for diplomacy to prevail over warfare in Libya and for citizens of the Middle East to build a new society.
Five years ago: President Barack Obama, visiting Hannover, Germany, defended international trade deals in the face of domestic and foreign opposition, saying it was “indisputable” that they strengthened the economy and made Americans businesses more competitive.
One year ago: The recorded U.S. death toll from the coronavirus passed the 50,000 mark. Republican governors in Georgia, Oklahoma and Alaska allowed some businesses to reopen with restrictions, although health experts warned that it was too soon to ease lockdown orders. President Donald Trump signed a
$484 billion measure to aid employers and hospitals under stress from the pandemic. The Food and Drug Administration issued an alert about the dangers of using a malaria drug that Trump had repeatedly promoted for coronavirus patients.