On this Day – April 24

Sunday Times, Australia
The Mercury, Australia
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
Advertiser, Australia
April 24 2004
On This Day
1915 – The Ottoman Turkish Empire begins the brutal mass deportation
of Armenians during World War I.
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,
the future Francois II.
1617 – Concino Concini, Marquis d’Angre, is assassinated by order of
France’s King Louis XIII, and Charles d’Albert, Duke of Luynes, takes
charge of government of France.
1671 – Defeated Cossack rebel leader Stenka Razin is captured by
loyalist Cossacks in Russia and turned over to the czar’s forces.
1704 – The first regularly issued American newspaper starts
publication.
1731 – Death of Daniel Defoe, British journalist and author of
Robinson Crusoe.
1792 – France’s national anthem, La Marseillaise, is composed by
Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle.
1819 – Turkey, after lengthy negotiations with Britain, the protector
of the island, obtains Parga from Ionian Republic.
1833 – The soda fountain is patented by Jacob Ebert and George
Dutley.
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 United States 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 1,600 Irish nationalists launch the Easter uprising by
seizing several key sites in Dublin. The rising is put down by
British forces several days later.
1939 – Robert Menzies becomes Australian prime minister, succeeding
Joseph Lyons, who died earlier in the month.
1945 – US forces liberate Dachau concentration camp.
1953 – British statesman Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen
Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
1962 – The Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieves the first
satellite relay of a television signal, between Camp Parks,
California, and Westford, Massachusetts.
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 guerrillas.
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 US island of
Guam as communists move rapidly in their takeover of South Vietnam.
1980 – The United States launches an abortive attempt to free
American hostages in Iran, a mission that results in the deaths of
eight US servicemen. President Jimmy Carter announces the failed
mission to the American people.
1986 – Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, for whom King Edward
VIII gave up the British throne, dies in Paris at age 89; Paul Hogan
film Crocodile Dundee premieres in Australian cinemas.
1989 – Rebels shell eastern Afghanistan city of Jalalabad, killing at
least 54 people.
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.
1992 – OPEC nations reject a demand by Iran for increased production.
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.
1994 – Cuban exiles are received by President Fidel Castro, the man
some have long wanted to overthrow.
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 theft by a regional court in South Africa
and sentenced to five years in prison.