Today in History, (April 17th)

858: Benedict III ends his reign as Catholic Pope


1492: A contract was signed by Christopher Columbus and a representative of Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, giving Columbus a commission to seek a westward ocean passage to Asia

1521: Martin Luther is excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church

1524: Giovanni da Verrazano reached present-day New York harbor

1535: Antonio Mendoza is appointed first viceroy of New Spain

1622: Poet Henry Vaughan born

1676: Frederick I, king of Sweden born

1741: Samuel Chase, signer of the Declaration of Independence born

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

1790: American statesman Benjamin Franklin died Philadelphia at age 84

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

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

1861: Virginia become eighth state to secede from the Union

1864: General Grant bans the trading of prisoners

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

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

1894: Nikita S Khrushchev, Soviet premier (1958-64) during the Cold War. born

1895: China and Japan sign peace treaty of Shimonoseki

1897: Novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder(Our Town and The Bridge of San Luis Rey) born

1923: Harry Reasoner, American broadcast journalist born

1923: Actor Lon McCallister born

1934: Rock promoter Don Kirshner born

1941: Yugoslavia surrendered to Germany World War Two

1946: The last French troops leave Syria

1947: Jackie Robinson bunts for his first major league hit

1951: Actress Olivia Hussey born

1955: Rock singer-musician Pete Shelley (Buzzcocks) born

1958: Composer-musician Jan Hammer born

1959: Actress Teri Austis born

1961: About 1500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba a failed attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro

1964: Actress Lela Rochon born

1964: Ford Motor Company unveiled its new "Mustang" model

1964: Jerrie Mock of Columbus, Ohio, became the first woman to complete a solo airplane flight around the world

1967: Singer Liz Phair born

1969: A jury Los Angeles convicted Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy

1969: Czechoslovakian Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek was deposed

1970: The astronauts of Apollo 13 splashed down safely the Pacific, four days after a ruptured oxygen tank crippled their spacecraft

1975: Phnom Penh fell to Communist insurgents, ending Cambodia's five-year war

1983: Warsaw, police route 1,000 Solidarity supporters

1989: The House Ethics Committee released its report accusing Speaker Jim Wright of violating House rules on the acceptance of gifts and outside income -- charges denied by the Texas Democrat

1990: President Bush warned the Soviet Union against carrying out an economic blockade of Lithuania, hinting at "appropriate responses."

1990: The Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, the civil rights activist and top aide to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., died in Atlanta at age 64

1991: Congress voted to put a quick end to a day-old nationwide strike by 235,000 rail workers (President George Bush signed the legislation early the next day)

1991: The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 3,000 for the first time, ending the day at 3,004.46

1993: A federal jury Los Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King; two other officers were acquitted

1994: Bosnian Serb tanks entered the Muslim enclave of Gorazde; the UN Security Council issued a nonbinding statement that condemned the Serbs' escalating military activities, but made no threat of force to back its condemnation

1995: An Air Force jet exploded and crashed in a wooded area in eastern Alabama, killing eight people, including an assistant Air Force secretary and a two-star general

1995: President Clinton signed an executive order stripping the classified label from most national security documents that were at least 25 years old

1996: Seeking to calm Pacific security jitters, President Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto signed a joint declaration establishing new U.S.-Japan ties for a "stable and prosperous" Asia

1996: A jury in Los Angeles opted to spare Erik and Lyle Menendez the death penalty, recommending that the brothers instead serve life in prison without parole for gunning down their wealthy parents

1998: A Thai military team collected evidence from the body of Pol Pot, former chief of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge guerrillas, to lay to rest doubts that one of the century's worst tyrants was truly dead

1999: The first of three bombs to explode in London within a two-week period went off in Brixton, a racially mixed neighborhood, injuring 39 people

1999: Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO's commander, warned Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to change his policies in Kosovo or see his military machine destroyed

2000: World finance officials in Washington closed out the most tumultuous meetings in the history of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank with renewed pledges to hasten debt relief for poor countries and increase support for fighting the AIDS epidemic

2000: Kenya's Elijah Lagat won the Boston Marathon; Catherine Ndereba became the first female Kenyan winner

2002: Four Canadian Forces soldiers are killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire from two U.S. Air Force F-16s, the first deaths in a combat zone for Canada since the Korean War

2005: Kenyan aviation union threatens government with strike

2005: Lebanese cabinet talks re-started by new PM

2005: Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, releases study of local emissions

2005: Body of missing Florida girl found

2005: Littlewoods plans to axe 3,200 jobs class=

2005: Internet censorship study group reports on China

2005: Famed classical works rediscovered

2005: Croke Park opens to soccer and Rugby

2005: Freak wave rocks luxury liner--4 hurt

2005: Harvard University declines to discipline professor who plagiarized

2005: Childhood exposure to TV linked to bullying

2005: Unconfirmed: 20 dead, hundreds hurt after protest in Iranian city of Ahwaz

2005: ACLU, Minutemen trade accusations of misbehavior

2005: Manchester United 4-1 Newcastle United

2005: Russian Soyuz docks with International Space Station for crew change

2005: Papal conclave attracting more bets than the Oscars

2005: British National Fingerprint Database begins without parliamentary consultation

2006: 10 people were killed and dozens wounded in a suicide attack near the old Central bus station in Tel Aviv

2006: Suspect in Oklahoma girl's murder blogged about depression, "dangerously weird" fantasies

2006: Greenpeace founder supports nuclear energy

2006: Rail accident in northern Greece

2006: Explosion in Tel Aviv injures at least 40, kills at least 8

2006: Sondhi may face arrest over lèse majesté allegations

2006: Still no action in standoff in Ontario town

2006: Canada confirms fifth case of Mad Cow Disease

2006: British National Party to tempt voters in May local elections

2007: A student from South Korea was identified on Tuesday as the gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech university in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history

2007: A U.S. soldier went on trial in absentia in Italy on Tuesday accused of killing an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq, but his lawyer said his client would reject the court's jurisdiction

2007: More than 250,000 homes and businesses remained without power Tuesday morning after a rare spring nor'easter hit on Sunday and Monday, knocking out electric service to more than 1.3 million customers from the Carolinas to Maine and Quebec

2007: Gunman identified as Cho Seung-hui, a 23-year-old English major from South KoreaCho called a loner by university officialReasonable to assume Cho was shooter in both dorm and classroom, police sayPolice: Victims found in four classrooms, stairwell

2007: It was more like a scene from an episode of "ER" than one from a real-life hospital in a small college town. "Nobody had ever seen anything like this before," CEO for Montgomery Regional Hospital Scott Hill said. "You can never adequately prepare for this level of violence."

2007: The president of Virginia Tech on Tuesday defended authorities' initial response to shootings at two university buildings that left 33 people dead, including the gunman

2007: Israel marks Holocaust Memorial Day

2007: France knew of and told CIA about al-Qaeda hijack plans prior to 9/11

2007: Virginia Tech shooter identified, witness reports emerge

2007: St. Edwards University, Texas evacuated due to bomb threat

2007: Cricket World Cup: England vs South Africa

2007: Mayor of Nagasaki dies after being shot

2007: Football: Manchester United push past Sheffield

2007: NHL: Sens edge out Pens to take commanding 3-1 series lead

2007: Ontario may adopt new voting system

2007: NHL: Flames burn Red Wings in Calgary

2007: NHL: Rangers dominate Thrashers, lead series 3-0

2008: A suicide bomber struck a funeral in northern Iraq on Thursday, killing 50 mourners and wounding 55 in an attack that suggests militants have launched a new campaign of violence in the north

2008: Pope Benedict, celebrating a stadium Mass for 45,000 people, acknowledged on Thursday that the U.S. pedophile priests scandal caused "indescribable pain and harm" to victims but asked Catholics to love their pastors

2008: A U.S. plan to cap greenhouse gases by 2025 was dismissed as too little, too late by some delegates at 17-nation climate talks in Paris on Thursday while others welcomed it as a first firm U.S. emissions ceiling

2008: Flora Jessop used cocaine to escape long after she fled the confines of a polygamist community in Colorado City, Arizona. Her story strikes a common theme among those who have fled the fundamentalist Mormon sect that still embraces polygamy as a pathway to the highest level of heaven

2008: Eric Bogosian on writing and the creative urge

2008: All metal cladding taken off Cabot Circus Tower due to fault

2008: Bomb hurt seven police in Basque city of Bilbao

2008: Computex Preview: WiMAX, threat? opportunity?

2008: Brazilian President: not continuing to use biofuels would be a 'crime against humanity'

2008: George Bush meets with Gordon Brown

2008: Indonesia angered as nation's airlines all remain banned in EU airspace

2008: 'Expelled' producers accused of copyright violations

2008: Japan Airlines fined US$110 million for price fixing

2009: The workplace raid that netted Gerardo Arreola Gonzalez and more than 20 other illegal immigrants would normally have been the first step toward deportation. But then Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she was unaware of the Washington state raid and vowed to "get to the bottom of it." Now Arreola has a legal permit to work in the United States, and opponents of illegal immigration are furious

2009: A small plane crashed Friday in a neighborhood in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, area, the Broward County sheriff's office and the Federal Aviation Administration said

2009: President Obama doesn't have a one-on-one meeting scheduled with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, but if Chavez were to initiate a conversation, Obama would likely go along with it, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said

2009: Asexual ants discovered

2009: Anti-tax tea parties held across the USA

2009: Small plane crash in Florida destroys home

2009: Fijian regime appoints vice-president

2009: Swedish court finds administrators of The Pirate Bay guilty of contributory copyright infringement

2009: Maoist guerrilla attacks kill at least 17 on first day of Indian elections