Monday, April 25

This Day In History

• 1792   Highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier became the first person under French law to be executed by guillotine.
• 1859   Ground was broken for the Suez Canal.
• 1874   Radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy.
• 1898   The United States declared war on Spain.
• 1901   New York became the first state to require automobile license plates; the fee was $1.
• 1915   Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to take the Ottoman Turkish Empire out of World War I.
• 1945 During World War II, United States and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe River, in central Europe, a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany.
• 1945   Delegates from some 50 countries met in San Francisco to organize the United Nations.
• 1954   The prototype manufacture of a new solar battery was announced by the Bell Laboratories in New York City.
• 1959   The St. Lawrence Seaway opened to shipping.
• 1967   Colorado Governor John Love signed the first law legalizing abortion in the United States. The law was limited to therapeutic abortions when agreed to, unanimously, by a panel of three physicians.
• 1983   Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov invited Samantha Smith to visit his country after receiving a letter in which the Maine schoolgirl expressed fears about nuclear war.
• 1983   The Pioneer 10 spacecraft crossed Pluto's orbit.
• 1985   For the first time in 40 years, Smokey Bear went into hibernation. The symbol of the U.S. Forest Service was put aside for a public service announcement about an arson suspect being booked at the police station. Representatives of the Ad Council (the public service agency that produced these messages for radio and TV) wanted to keep his image ?warm and fuzzy.? Smokey is back now and doing fine, thank you.
• 1990   Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was inaugurated as president of Nicaragua, ending 11 years of leftist Sandinista rule.
• 1990   The Hubble Space Telescope was deployed from the space shuttle Discovery.
• 1992   Islamic forces in Afghanistan took control of most of the capital of Kabul following the collapse of the Communist government.
• 1998   Whitewater prosecutors questioned first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton on videotape about her work as a private lawyer for a failed savings and loan.
• 2001   Federal regulators ordered limited price controls on California wholesale electricity markets.
• 2002   Lisa ''Left Eye'' Lopes, a member of the Grammy-winning trio TLC, died in a car crash in Honduras at age 30.
• 2003   Georgia lawmakers voted to scrap the Dixie cross from the state's flag.

Happy Birthday To

• 1874   Guglielmo Marconi (?Father of Radio?: inventor: 1909 Nobel Laureate in Physics: wireless telegraphy [the transmission of Morse Code over electromagnetic energy]; died July 19, 1937)
• 1906   William J. Brennan Jr. (Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: authored more than 1,200 opinions, including many landmarks: free press [New York Times v. Sullivan], women?s rights [Frontiero v. Richardson], reapportionment [Baker v. Carr], civil rights [Cooper v. Aaron, Green v. County School Board]; died July 24, 1997)
• 1908   Edward R. (Roscoe) Murrow (newsman: You are There, Person to Person; former head U.S. Information Agency; died Apr 27, 1965)
• 1918   Ella Fitzgerald (Grammy Award-winning singer [12]: Bill Bailey Won?t You Please Come Home, Mack the Knife, A-Tisket, A-Tasket; died June 15, 1996)
• 1932   Meadowlark (George) Lemon (basketball: Harlem Globetrotters)
• 1940   Al (Alfredo James) Pacino (Academy Award-winning actor: Scent of a Woman [1992]; Scarface, Serpico, The Godfather, Dick Tracy; Tony Award-winning actor: Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie [1969], The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel [1977])
• 1946   Talia Shire (Coppola) (actress: Godfather series, Rocky series, For Richer, For Poorer, A Century of Women, Blood Vows)