Today In History April 24

HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE

1514 - Selim I, Sultan of Turkey, begins marching his army to Persia.

1521 - Spanish rebels are defeated at Villalar, Spain, and leaders of anti-Hapsburg movement are executed.

1558 - Mary Queen of Scots, aged 16, marries the Dauphin of France, tour thác bản giốc the future Francois II.

1792 - France's national anthem, La Marseillaise, is composed by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle.

1850 - Paul Julius Reuter, founder of the news agency that bears his name, uses 40 pigeons to carry stock market prices between Brussels and Aachen.

1877 - American Federal troops are ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North's post-Civil War rule in the South.

1898 - Spain declares war on the US after receiving US ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.

1915 - The Ottoman Turkish Empire begins the brutal mass deportation of Armenians during World War I.

1916 - Some 1600 Irish nationalists launch the Easter uprising by seizing several key sites in Dublin. The rising is put down by British forces several days later.

1945 - US forces liberate Dachau concentration camp.

1953 - British statesman Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

1967 - Soviet Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed when parachute straps of his spacecraft get entangled and he plunges to earth.

1969 - Lebanon's Premier Rashid Karami resigns amid dispute over government's restrictions on Palestinian guerillas.

1970 - China launches its first satellite.

1971 - Soviet cosmonauts link up with unmanned satellite prior to attempt to build world's first orbiting space laboratory.

1975 - Terrorists from the German Red Army faction occupy the West German Embassy in Stockholm, taking 12 people hostage and killing two of them. Thousands of Vietnamese refugees are flown to the US island kynghidongduong.vn of Guam as communists take over South Vietnam.

1980 - The US launches an abortive attempt to free American hostages in Iran, a mission that results in the deaths of eight its servicemen.

1986 - The Duchess of Windsor, for whom Edward VIII gave up the British throne, dies in Paris, aged 89

1990 - The US space shuttle Discovery takes the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.

1991 - South African government announces it will uphold agreement with African National Congress to free all political prisoners by April 30.

1993 - Commandos break into a cockpit of a commandeered Indian Airlines plane in Amritsar, India, shoot dead the lone hijacker and free all 141 people aboard.

1995 - The British government upgrades its talks with Sinn Fein, the political ally of the IRA, by assigning a minister to negotiate.

1996 - The Palestinian parliament declares in Gaza City that it no longer seeks Israel's destruction and has abandoned armed struggle.

1997 - Islamist militants armed with sabres and axes strike two villages in Algeria, butchering 47 people in a pre-election terror wave that leaves an estimated 420 dead in a few weeks.

1998 - In front of a cheering crowd, 22 Rwandans convicted of genocide are executed by firing squad in Kigali.

1999 - A car bomb explodes in one of London's biggest Bangladeshi communities, injuring seven people. A racist group claims responsibility.

2000 - Iranian hardliners close down 14 pro-democracy publications in a strike against a major pillar of the reform movement.

2001 - A jury is chosen in the murder trial of a former Ku Klux Klansman charged 38 years after the church bombing that killed four black girls in Birmingham, Alabama.

2002 - Sweden's National Food Administration reports that potentially harmful amounts of a chemical suspected of causing cancer are produced when starchy foods are baked or fried at high temperatures.

2003 - Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the former wife of Nelson Mandela, is convicted of fraud and tour thác bản giốc từ hà nội theft by a regional court in South Africa and sentenced to five years in prison.

2006 - Three bombings hit an Egyptian beach resort popular with foreigners, killing at least 21 people and wounding more than 60.

2009 - Mexico shuts down schools, museums, libraries and state-run theatres across its over-crowded capital in hopes of containing a swine flu outbreak that authorities say has killed at least 20 people.

2010 - Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas calls on President Barack Obama to impose a Mideast peace deal, reflecting growing frustration with what Palestinians see as Washington's failure to wrangle concessions out of Israel's hardline government.

2011 - A civil rights group says at least 500 people died in religious rioting that followed Nigeria's presidential election.

2013 - The collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory complex in a suburb of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka kills 1129 people and injured thousands. The 11th-century minaret of a famous mosque in Aleppo's old quarter collapses as rebels and government troops battle in surrounding streets.

2014 - Russia announces new military exercises involving ground and air forces near its border with Ukraine, swiftly responding to a Ukrainian operation to drive pro-Russia insurgents out of occupied buildings in the country's tumultuous east.

2015 - Thousands of Australians and New Zealanders gather under tight security at Anzac Cove, overlooking the Dardanelles, in preparation for the centenary commemoration of the Gallipoli landing.

2016 - Nine Network reporter Michael Usher admits "we made mistakes" in a 60 Minutes report about his colleagues' detainment in Lebanon over a botched kidnapping attempt.

2017 - Maoist rebels kill 11 Indian paramilitary soldiers and injure seven others in an attack in central India.

2018 - A van mounts a footpath in the Canadian city of Toronto and runs down pedestrians, leaving 10 dead and 15 injured.

2019 - Former registrar at the Royal Hobart Hospital, Dr Christopher Kwan Chen Lee, is suspended for six weeks after calling for women to be raped.

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS

St Vincent de Paul, French priest and founder of charity orders (1576-1600); Edmund Cartwright, English inventor of first power loom (1743-1823); Anthony Trollope, English novelist (1815-1882); William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw), British fascist and Nazi broadcaster (1906-1946); Shirley MacLaine, US actor (1934-); Jill Ireland, US actor (1936-1990); John Williams, Australian classical guitarist (1941-); Barbra Streisand, US actor and singer (1942-); Jean Paul Gaultier, French fashion designer (1952-); Sachin Tendulkar, Indian cricketer (1973-); Kelly Clarkson, US singer (1982-); Snuppy, world's first cloned dog (2005-).

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

We are what we think. All that we are, arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. - Buddha.