Today in History: April 17

2003: Anneli Jäätteenmäki was sworn in as prime minister of Finland, which thereby became the second country (after New Zealand) to install a woman as head of both state and government.

1982: The Canada Act, also known as the Constitution Act, took effect on this day in 1982, establishing certain individual rights, preserving parliamentary supremacy, and making Canada a wholly independent, fully sovereign state.

1975: Cambodia's ruling Lon Nol government collapsed, and the communist forces of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, entered Phnom Penh and forcibly dispersed its citizenry into rural areas.

1970: Apollo 13–originaly scheduled to land on the moon–lands back safely on Earth after an accident.

1969: Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

1964: Jerrie Mock becomes first woman to fly solo around the world.

1961: Cuban leader Fidel Castro's forces repelled the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was led by recent 1,400 Cuban exiles and financed by the U.S. government during the Cold War.

1956: Cominform, the international Communist Information Bureau founded in 1947, was disbanded as part of a Soviet program of reconciliation with Yugoslavia.

1947: Jackie Robinson bunts for his first major league hit.

1946: The last French troops leave Syria.

1929: Baseball player Babe Ruth and Claire Hodgeson, a former member of the Ziegfield Follies, get married.

1895: The Treaty of Shimonoseki concluded the first Sino-Japanese War, which ended in China's defeat.

1895: China and Japan sign peace treaty of Shimonoseki.

1875: The game "snooker" is invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain.

1865: Mary Surratt is arrested as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination.

1864: General Grant bans the trading of prisoners.

1861: Virginia become eighth state to secede from the Union.

1824: Russia abandons all North American claims south of 54' 40'.

1808: Bayonne Decree by Napoleon I of France orders seizure of U.S. ships.

1758: Frances Williams, the first African-American to graduate for a college in the western hemisphere, publishes a collection of Latin poems.

1535: Antonio Mendoza is appointed first viceroy of New Spain.

1524: Present-day New York Harbor is discovered by Giovanni Verrazano.

1521: Martin Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms to defend his ideas on church reform.

1492: Christopher Columbus signs a contract with Spain to find a western route to the Indies.

1194: Richard I (the Lion-Heart) was crowned king of England for the second time, after earlier surrendering his kingdom to the Holy Roman emperor Henry VI.

858: Benedict III ends his reign as Catholic Pope.