Today in History: April 28

2004: The Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal first comes to light when graphic photos of U.S. soldiers physically abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners were shown on CBS's 60 Minutes II.

2001: Dennis Tito became the first space tourist.

1992: The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture unveiled its first “food pyramid.”

1969: Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France.

1967: Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the U.S. Army and is stripped of boxing title.

1965: The U.S. Army and Marines invade the Dominican Republic.

1856: Yokut Indians repel an attack on their land by 100 would-be Indian fighters in California.

1953: French troops evacuate northern Laos.

1947: Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl and five others set out in a balsa wood craft known as Kon Tiki to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in Polynesia.

1946: The Allies indict Tojo on 55 counts of war crimes

1945: Benito Mussolini is killed by Italian partisans.

1932: A yellow fever vaccine for humans is announced.

1930: The first organized night baseball game is played in Independence, Kansas.

1920: Azerbaijan joins the Soviet Union.

1919: Les Irvin makes the first jump with an Army Air Corps parachute.

1916: British declare martial law throughout Ireland.

1902: Revolution breaks out in the Dominican Republic.

1818: President James Monroe proclaims naval disarmament on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.

1789: The crew of the HMS Bounty mutinies against Captain William Bligh.

1788: Maryland becomes the seventh state to ratify the constitution.

1760: French forces besieging Quebec defeat the British in the second battle on the Plains of Abraham.

1635: Virginia Governor John Harvey is accused of treason and removed from office.

1282: Villagers in Palermo lead a revolt against French rule in Sicily.

357: Constantius II visits Rome for the first time.

Today in History: April 27

1993: Eritrea declared itself independent.

1989: Protesting students take over Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.

1987: Austrian president Kurt Waldheim was barred from entering the United States. He was accused of aiding in the execution of thousands of Jews in World War II.

1983: Pitcher Nolan Ryan surpassed Walter Johnson’s strikeout record—one that had held since 1927.

1978: The Afghanistan revolution begins.

1975: Saigon is encircled by North Vietnamese troops.

1961: The United Kingdom grants Sierra Leone independence.

1956: Rocky Marciano retired as undefeated world heavyweight boxing champion.

1950: South Africa passes the Group Areas Act, formally segregating races.

1941: The Greek army capitulates to the invading Germans.

1937: German bombers of the Condor Legion devastate Guernica, Spain.

1909: The Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II, is overthrown.

1865: The Sultana, a steam-powered riverboat, catches fire and burns after one of its boilers explodes. At least 1,238 of the 2,031 passengers–mostly former Union POWs–are killed.

1863: The Army of the Potomac begins marching on Chancellorsville.

1861: President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus.

1861: West Virginia secedes from Virginia after Virginia secedes from the Union.

1813: American forces capture York (present-day Toronto), the seat of government in Ontario.

1805: The U.S. Marines captured Derna, on the shores of Tripoli.

1773: British Parliament passes the Tea Act.

1746: King George II wins the battle of Culloden.

1565: The first Spanish settlement in Philippines is established in Cebu City.

1521: Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed in a fight with natives of the Philippines.

1509: Pope Julius II excommunicates the Italian state of Venice.

1296: Edward I defeats the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar.

Today in History: April 26

2000: Vermont Governor Howard Dean signed the nation's first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.1994: Nelson Mandela wins the presidency in South Africa's first multiracial elections.

1986: The world's worst nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl power plant in the Soviet Union.

1983: The Dow Jones Industrial Average breaks 1,200 for first time.

1968: Students seize the administration building at Ohio State University.

1964: Tanganyika and Zanzibar joined to form Tanzania.

1941: The first organ is played at a baseball stadium in Chicago.

1937: The ancient Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain is bombed by German planes.

1931: New York Yankee Lou Gehrig hits a home run but is called out for passing a runner, the mistake ultimately costs him the home run record.

1929: The first non-stop flight from England to India is completed.

1915: Second Lieutenant Rhodes-Moorhouse becomes the first airman to win the Victoria Cross after conducting a successful bombing raid.

1865: Joseph E. Johnston surrenders the Army of Tennessee to Sherman.

1607: The British establish a colony at Cape Henry, Virginia.

1564: William Shakespeare is baptized.

1514: Copernicus makes his first observations of Saturn.

1478: Pazzi conspirators attack Lorenzo and kill Giuliano de'Medici.

757  : Stephen II ends his reign as Catholic Pope.

Today in history: April 25

2003: The Georgia legislature voted to scrap the "Confederate flag" design from its state flag.

1992: Islamic forces took over most of Kabul, Afghanistan after the Soviet-controlled government collapsed.

1990: Violeta Barrios de Chamorro begins a six year term as Nicaragua's president.

1982: In accordance with the Camp David agreements, Israel completes a withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula.

1980: President Jimmy Carter tells the American people about the hostage rescue disaster in Iran.

1971: The country of Bangladesh is established.

1962: A U.S. Ranger spacecraft crash lands on the Moon.

1960: The first submerged circumnavigation of the Earth is completed by a Triton submarine.

1959: The St. Lawrence Seaway–linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes–opens to shipping.

1956: Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" goes to number one on the charts.

1953: The magazine Nature publishes an article by biologists Francis Crick and James Watson, describing the "double helix" of DNA.

1951: After a three day fight against Chinese Communist Forces, the Gloucestershire Regiment is annihilated on "Gloucester Hill," in Korea.

1945: U.S. and Soviet forces meet at Torgau, Germany on Elbe River.

1938: A seeing eye dog is used for the first time.

1928: The first seeing eye dog was presented to Morris S. Frank.

1926: In Iran, Reza Kahn is crowned Shah and chooses the name "Pehlevi."

1926: Puccini's opera Turandot premiers at La Scala in Milan with Arturo Toscanini conducting.

1925: General Paul von Hindenburg takes office as president of Germany.

1915: Australian and New Zealand troops land at Gallipoli in Turkey.

1901: New York became the first state to require license plates on cars.

1898: The United States declares war on Spain.

1882: French commander Henri Riviere seizes the citadel of Hanoi in Indochina.

1867: Tokyo is opened for foreign trade.

1864: After facing defeat in the Red River Campaign, Union General Nathaniel Bank returns to Alexandria, Louisiana.

1862: Admiral Farragut occupies New Orleans, Louisiana.

1859: Work begins on the Suez Canal in Egypt.

1792: The guillotine is first used to execute highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier.

1719: Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe is published in London.

1707: At the Battle of Almansa, Franco-Spanish forces defeat the Anglo-Portugese forces.

1644: The Ming Chongzhen emperor commits suicide by hanging himself.

1590: The Sultan of Morocco launches a successful attack to capture Timbuktu.

Today in History: April 24

2005: 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.

1990: The shuttle Discovery blasted off with the Hubble Space Telescope.

1989: Thousands of Chinese students strike in Beijing for more democratic reforms.

1981: The IBM Personal Computer is introduced.

1980: A rescue attempt of the U.S. hostages held in Iran fails when a plane collides with a helicopter in the Iranian desert.

1968: Leftist students take over Columbia University in protest over the Vietnam War.

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.

1961: President John Kennedy accepts "sole responsibility" for the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.

1953: Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

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.

1948: The Berlin airlift begins to relieve surrounded city.

1944: The first B-29 arrives in China, over the Hump of the Himalayas.

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.

1915: Turks began deportation of Armenians that led to the massacre of between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians.

1904: Painter Willem de Kooning, one of the leading exponents of Abstract Expressionism, was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

1898: Spain declares war on United States, rejecting an ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.

1884: Otto von Bismarck cables Cape Town, South Africa that it is now a German colony.

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.

1833: A patent is granted for first soda fountain.

1805: U.S. Marines attack and capture the town of Derna in Tripoli from the Barbary pirates.

1800: The Library of Congress is established in Washington, D.C. with a $5,000 allocation.

1792: French army officer Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle composed "La Marseillaise," the French national anthem.

1558: Mary, Queen of Scotland, marries the French dauphin, Francis.

1547: Charles V's troops defeat the Protestant League of Schmalkalden at the battle of Muhlburg.

1519: Envoys of Montezuma II attend the first Easter mass in Central America.

858: St. Nicholas I begins his reign as Catholic Pope. 

Today in History: April 23

1998: James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr., died in prison in Nashville, Tennessee.

1993: On this day in 1993, after a long history of foreign rule and decades of war, the small East African country of Eritrea began three days of voting on a referendum to make official its independence from Ethiopia.

1985: Coca-Cola announced that it was changing its formula and introduced New Coke.

1969: Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death (later reduced to a life sentence) for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

1954: Hank Aaron hit the first of his 755 home runs.

1906: Russian Tsar Nicholas II promulgated the Fundamental Laws, which marked the end of unlimited autocracy but fell short of the reforms promised in the October Manifesto.

1858: German physicist Max Planck, who originated quantum theory, was born in Kiel.

1791: James Buchanan, the 15th U.S. president, was born near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.

1616: Playwright William Shakespeare died in Stratford-on-Avon, England.

1016: Upon the death of King Ethelred II of England, his son claimed the throne as Edmund II.

Today in History: April 22

2000: Armed immigration agents took Elian Gonzalez from the Miami home of his relatives to reunite him with his father.

1994: Former U.S. president Richard M. Nixon died at the age 81.

1970: First celebrated on this day in 1970 in the U.S., Earth Day—founded by American politician and conservationist Gaylord Anton Nelson—helped spark the environmental movement and quickly grew into an international event.

1915: During World War I, German forces introduced the systematized use of chemical warfare when they released chlorine gas along a 4-mile (6-km) front at the Second Battle of Ypres.

1889: At noon, by federal decree, white settlers were allowed into Indian Territory, sparking a land rush involving tens of thousands in what became Oklahoma Territory.

1870: Vladimir Ilich Lenin—who founded the Bolshevik political faction (1912–17), inspired and led the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), headed (1917–24) the Soviet state, and founded the organization known as the Comintern (Communist International)—was born.

1864: Congress authorized the inscription "In God We Trust" on coins minted as U.S. currency.

1724: German philosopher Immanuel Kant was born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia).

1616: The Spanish poet Cervantes died in Madrid. (Some sources say April 23.)

1509: Henry VIII became king of England.

1500: Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, while on a voyage tracing Vasco da Gama's 1497–99 water route to India, sighted the mainland of South America near the present-day city of Pôrto Seguro, Brazil.

1370: Construction began on the Bastille, the medieval fortress that came to symbolize French despotism.

1073: Gregory VII (later canonized) was elected by acclamation to succeed Alexander II as pope.