Today's Highlight in History:
On April 19, 1775, the American Revolutionary War began with the battles of Lexington and Concord.
On this date:
In 1897, the first Boston Marathon was held; winner John J. McDermott ran the course in 2 hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds.
In 1933, the United States went off the gold standard.
In 1943, during World War II, tens of thousands of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but futile battle against Nazi forces.
In 1951, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, relieved of his Far East command by President Truman, bid farewell in an address to Congress in which he quoted a line from a ballad: "Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."
In 1975, India launched its first satellite atop a Soviet rocket.
In 1982, astronauts Sally K. Ride and Guion S. Bluford Jr. became the first woman and first African-American to be tapped for U.S. space missions.
In 1989, 47 sailors were killed when a gun turret exploded aboard the USS Iowa.
In 1993, the 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended as fire destroyed the structure after federal agents began smashing their way in; dozens of people, including David Koresh, were killed.
In 1995, a truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. (Timothy McVeigh was later convicted of federal murder charges and executed.)
In 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope in the first conclave of the new millennium; he took the name Benedict XVI.
Ten years ago: Wang Dan, a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, arrived in the United States after being freed by China. Mexican poet-philosopher Octavio Paz died at age 84.
