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.