POPnews - April 24th

[From a landscaped park with a few rustic attractions, HersheyPark has grown to include some 11 rollercoasters, an equal number of waterslides, plus more than sixty rides. Even the Tilt-A-Whirl!]
1479 BC - Thutmose III ascended to the throne of Egypt, although power effectively shifted to his stepmother Hatshepsut; it was during their co-reign that the Egyptian Empire attained its greatest influence.

1558 - Mary Queen of Scots married François, Dauphin of France, at Notre Dame de Paris.

1907 - Hersheypark - an amusement park founded by industrialist and chocolatier Milton S. Hershey for the exclusive use of his employees - was opened; it has been constantly expanding since opening to the general public a few years later.

1913 - The opulent Cass Gilbert-designed Woolworth Building was opened when US President Woodrow Wilson pressed a button in Washington, DC, illuminating all 5,000 windows in F. W. Woolworth's 'cathedral of commerce' in Lower Manhattan.

1915 - The Armenian Genocide began with a massacre of hundreds of prominent Armenians in Constantinople.

1916 - The Easter Rising began when the Irish Republican Brotherhood led by nationalists Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, and Joseph Plunkett started a rebellion in Ireland.

1926 - The Treaty of Berlin was signed by Germany and the Soviet Union, by which each pledged neutrality in the event of an attack on the other by a third party for the next five years.

1953 - Winston Churchill was knighted by Elizabeth II.

1961 - The 17th century Swedish warship Vasa was salvaged; once the pride of Gustavus Adolphus, the ship foundered less than a mile into her maiden voyage in August 1628.

1963 - Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra of Kent married Angus Ogilvy at Westminster Abbey in London.

1965 - Civil war broke out in the Dominican Republic when Colonel Francisco Caamaño overthrew the triumvirate that had been in power since the coup d'état against Juan Bosch in September 1963.

1967 - Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died when the parachute on the Soyuz 1 capsule failed to open upon its return to Earth, making him the first human to die during a space mission. He'd already earned his place in history as the first cosmonaut to return to space; his first mission had been upon Voskhod 1 in October 1964.

1970 - China's first satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, was launched.

1975 - The Baader-Meinhof Gang blew up the West German embassy in Stockholm.

1980 - Eight US servicemen died during Operation Eagle Claw as they attempted to end the Iran Hostage Crisis.

1990 - During NASA's mission STS-31 the Hubble Space Telescope was launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery.

1991 - Freddie Stowers was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for which he had been recommended in 1918. You get three guesses why a black man was passed up for an award he deserved in 1918 - and the first two don't count!

1993 - An IRA bomb devastated the Bishopsgate area of the City of London.

2005 - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was inaugurated as the 265th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church taking as his papal name Benedict XVI.
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