04/24/2026
Today’s Highlight in History:
On April 24, 1980, the United States launched an unsuccessful attempt to free the American hostages in Iran, a mission that resulted in the deaths of eight U.S. servicemen.
On this date:
In 1953, British statesman Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
In 1962, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieved the first satellite relay of a television signal, using NASA’s Echo 1 balloon satellite to bounce a video image from Camp Parks, California, to Westford, Massachusetts.
In 1967, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when his Soyuz 1 spacecraft smashed into the Earth after his parachutes failed to deploy properly during re-entry; he was the first human spaceflight fatality.
In 1970, the People’s Republic of China launched its first satellite, which kept transmitting a song, “The East Is Red.”
In 1990, the space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.
In 2003, U.S. forces in Iraq took custody of Tariq Aziz (TAH'-rihk ah-ZEEZ'), the former Iraqi deputy prime minister.
Thought for Today: " Almost every person, from childhood, has been touched by the untamed beauty of wildflowers. .— Lady Bird Johnson, Former First Lady of the United States, Co-Founder of the National Wildflower Research Center west of Austin and was born in Karnack Texas
Today’s Highlight in History:
On April 25, 1972, Polaroid Corp. introduced its SX-70 folding camera, which ejected self-developing photographs.
On this date:
n 1507, a world map produced by a German cartographer contained the first recorded use of the term “America,” in honor of Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci (vehs-POO’-chee).
In 1792, highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier became the first person under French law to be executed by the guillotine.
In 1862, during the Civil War, a Union fleet commanded by Flag Officer David G. Farragut captured the city of New Orleans.
In 1901, New York Gov. Benjamin Barker Odell, Jr. signed an automobile registration bill which imposed a 15 mph speed limit on highways.
In 1945, during World War II, U.S. and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe (EL’-beh) River, divided the Nazi's remaining military force, and forged an alliance between the two Allied countries. Five days later Hi**er committed su***de.
In 1968, The Beatles refused to perform for the Queen of England, saying regardless of the cause, they don't do benefits.
In 1983, 10-year-old Samantha Smith of Manchester, Maine, received a reply from Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov to a letter she’d written expressing concern about possible nuclear war; Andropov reassured Samantha that the Soviet Union did not want war, and he invited her to visit his country, a trip Samantha made in July.
Thought for Today: " It isn't where you came from, its where you're going that counts." Ella Fitzgerald, American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella. Born on April 25, 1917
Today’s Highlight in History:
On April 26, 1777, according to a widely accepted account from the American Revolutionary War, 16-year-old Sybil Ludington, the eldest child of Col. Henry Ludington, a militia commander in Dutchess County, New York, rode her horse into the night to alert her father's men of the approach of British regular troops who were sacking Danbury, Connecticut. (Ludington, sometimes referred to as "the female Paul Revere," was said to have covered 40 miles, more than twice the distance of the Boston silversmith's ride.)
On this date:
in 1913, Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old worker at a Georgia pencil factory, was strangled; Leo Frank, the factory superintendent, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to death. (Frank’s death sentence was commuted, but he was lynched by a mob in 1915.)
In 1952, the destroyer-minesweeper USS Hobson sank in the central Atlantic after colliding with the aircraft carrier USS Wasp with the loss of 176 crew members.
In 1977, the New York disco Studio 54 opened. It fast became the "in" place to be and a legendary symbol of the decadent disco era and overindulgent celeb culture. Regulars included Andy Warhol, Mick and Bianca Jagger, Truman Capote, and Elizabeth Taylor.
In 1986, an unexpected power surge caused a rupture in Reactor 4 at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear plant. The resulting explosion was the world's worst nuclear accident and caused radioactive fallout to begin spewing into the atmosphere over large swathes of the Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Western Europe, forcing hundreds of thousands from their homes in the most heavily hit areas.
Thought for Today: "A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.” _ John James Audubon, American ornithologist, naturalist and artist known for his studies and detailed illustrations of North American birds born on this day 1785.
