1558 – Mary, Queen of Scotland, married the French dauphin, Francis.
1800 – The Library of Congress was established with a $5,000 allocation.
1805 – The U.S. Marines attacked and captured the town of Derna in Tripoli.
1877 – Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire.
1877 – In the U.S., federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans. This was the end to the North’s post-Civil War rule in the South.
1884 – Otto von Bismarck cabled Cape Town that South Africa was now a German colony.
1889 – The Edison General Electric Company was organized.
1898 – Spain declared war on the U.S., rejecting America’s ultimatum for Spain to withdraw from Cuba.
1915 – During World War I, the Ottoman Turkish Empire began the mass deportation of Armenians.
1916 – Irish nationalist launched the Easter Rebellion against British occupation forces. They were overtaken several days later.
1944 – The first B-29 arrived in China, over the Hump of the Himalayas.
1953 – Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
1961 – U.S. President Kennedy accepted “sole responsibility” following Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
1967 – Soviet astronaut Vladimir Komarov died when his craft crashed with a tangled parachute.
1970 – The People’s Republic of China launched its first satellite.
1990 – The space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, FL. It was carrying the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.
1997 – The U.S. Senate ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. The global treaty banned the development, production, storage and use of chemical weapons.
