Today is Monday, April 20, the 111th day of 2020. There are 255 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On April 20, 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.
On this date:
In 1836, Congress voted to establish the Wisconsin Territory.
In 1912, Boston’s Fenway Park hosted its first professional baseball game while Navin (NAY’-vihn) Field (Tiger Stadium) opened in Detroit. (The Red Sox defeated the New York Highlanders 7-6 in 11 innings; the Tigers beat the Cleveland Naps 6-5 in 11 innings.)
In 1914, the Ludlow Massacre took place when the Colorado National Guard opened fire on a tent colony of striking miners; about 20 (accounts vary) strikers, women and children died.
In 1938, “Olympia,” Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary about the 1936 Berlin Olympic games, was first shown in Nazi Germany.
In 1972, Apollo 16’s lunar module, carrying astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke Jr., landed on the moon.
In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Wooley v. Maynard, ruled 6-3 that car owners could refuse to display state mottoes on license plates, such as New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die.”
In 1986, following an absence of six decades, Russian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz performed in the Soviet Union to a packed audience at the Grand Hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.
In 1988, gunmen who had hijacked a Kuwait Airways jumbo jet were allowed safe passage out of Algeria under an agreement that freed the remaining 31 hostages and ended a 15-day siege in which two passengers were slain.
In 1999, the Columbine High School massacre took place in Colorado as two students shot and killed 12 classmates and one teacher before taking their own lives.
In 2003, U.S. Army forces took control of Baghdad from the Marines in a changing of the guard that thinned the military presence in the capital.
In 2005, President George W. Bush signed a bill making it harder for debt-ridden people to wipe clean their financial slates by declaring bankruptcy. In his first Mass as pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI pledged to work for unity among Christians and to seek “an open and sincere dialogue” with other faiths. Ecuador’s Congress voted to remove embattled President Lucio Gutierrez from office and swear in Vice President Alfredo Palacio to replace him.
In 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, leased by BP, killed 11 workers and caused a blow-out that began spewing an estimated 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. (The well was finally capped nearly three months later.)
