Today is Wednesday, April 2, the 92nd day of 2025
with 273 to follow.
The moon is waxing. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mars and Venus. Evening stars are Jupiter, Mars and Uranus.
On this date in history:
In 1513, Ponce De Leon of Spain landed at what is now St. Augustine, Fla., to search for the Fountain of Youth.
In 1792, Congress passed legislation authorizing the U.S. Mint to coin money, all to be inscribed with the Latin words "E Pluribus Unum," a motto meaning "Out of Many, One."
In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes and his wife, Lucy Hayes, brought the annual Easter Egg Roll to the White House. Prior to that, it had been held on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol.
In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany.
In 1932, aviator Charles Lindbergh left $50,000 in a New York City cemetery for the return of his kidnapped son. The child was later found dead. Bruno Hauptmann subsequently was convicted of kidnapping and murder, and was executed.
In 1975, South Vietnamese military and civilians began evacuating Quang Ngai province from the city of Qui Nhon as the North Vietnamese began its march toward Saigon. The North captured the capital city later in the month.
In 1982, Argentine troops stormed the Falkland Islands in South America, overwhelming the small British marine unit stationed there.
In 1992, a New York jury convicted mob boss John Gotti in five killings, racketeering and other charges. Gotti died in prison in 2002.
In 2005, Pope John Paul II, head of the Roman Catholic Church for more than a quarter century, died at his Vatican apartment. The 84-year-old pontiff had urinary and bacterial infections that led to organ failure.
In 2007 the University of Florida repeated as NCAA Division I basketball champion, becoming the first school to win both the national collegiate major basketball and football titles the same calendar year.
In 2012, One Goh, a 38-year-old former nursing student in Oakland, Calif., opened fire on the Oikos University campus, killing seven people and injuring three others, authorities said. He was captured a short time later.
In 2014, a soldier shot and killed three service members, injured 16 others, then killed himself at Fort Hood, Texas, 4 1/2 years after 13 people died in a shooting spree at the same base.
In 2015, al-Shabab militants conducted an "operation against the infidels," killing 148 people at Garissa University College in Kenya.
In 2021, authorities put the U.S. Capitol complex on lockdown after a car rammed into a barricade, leaving a police officer and the suspect dead.
