TODAY IN HISTORY

1861: Col. Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army. (Lee went on to command the Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War, and eventually became general-in-chief of the Confederate forces.)

1912: Boston’s Fenway Park hosted its first professional baseball game while Navin Field (later Tiger Stadium) opened in Detroit. (The Red Sox defeated the New York Highlanders 7-6 in 11 innings; the Tigers beat the Cleveland Naps 6-5 in 11 innings.)

1916: The Chicago Cubs played their first game at Wrigley Field (then known as Weeghman Park); the Cubs defeated the Cincinnati Reds 7-6.

1971: The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.

1972: Apollo 16’s lunar module, carrying astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke Jr., landed on the moon.

1986: Following an absence of six decades spent in the West, Russian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz performed in the Soviet Union to a packed audience at the Grand Hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.

1999: The Columbine High School massacre took place in Colorado as two students shot and killed 12 classmates and one teacher before taking their own lives.

2003: U.S. Army forces took control of Baghdad from the Marines in a changing of the guard that thinned the military presence in the capital.

2010: An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, leased by BP, killed 11 workers and caused a blowout that began spewing an estimated 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. (The well was finally capped nearly three months later.)

2012: A judge ruled that George Zimmerman could be released on $150,000 bail while he awaited trial on a charge of murdering 17-year-old Trayvon Martin during a February 2012 confrontation in a Sanford, Fla., gated community. (Zimmerman was acquitted.)

2020: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said reports of accidental poisonings from cleaners and disinfectants were up about 20% in the first three months of the year; researchers believed it was related to the coronavirus epidemic.