|
||
The events happened on 24th April are : 2005 : Installation of Pope Benedict XVI : On this day in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), successor to John Paul II, formally assumed his position as the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church during a mass in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City. 2003 : Officials of North Korea informed U.S. diplomats that it had nuclear weapons and was making bomb-grade plutonium. 1967 : Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov became the first man to die during a space mission when his spacecraft became entangled in its parachute during an attempted landing. 1949 : Communist forces occupied the Chinese capital, Nanking (Nanjing), after crossing the Yangtze River virtually unopposed by adherents to the Nationalist government under President Chiang Kai-shek. 1916 : Members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army seized strategic points in Dublin during the Easter Rising, which heralded the end of British power in Ireland. 1904 : Painter Willem de Kooning, one of the leading exponents of Abstract Expressionism, was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. 1898 : Spain declared war on the United States. 1877 : War broke out between Russia and the Ottoman Empire at the conclusion of the Serbo-Turkish War, resulting in independence for Serbia and Montenegro. 1792 : French army officer Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle composed "La Marseillaise," the French national anthem. Today in History IndexFrom 24th April to HOME PAGE |
|
|
|