By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Tuesday, April 24, the 114th day of 2018. There are 251 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On April 24, 1800, Congress approved a bill establishing the Library of Congress.

On this date:

In 1792, Capt. Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle began composing “War Song for the Rhine Army,” later known as “La Marseillaise” (lah mahr-say-YEHZ’), the national anthem of France.

In 1877, federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North’s post-Civil War rule in the South.

In 1915, in what’s considered the start of the Armenian genocide, the Ottoman Empire began rounding up Armenian political and cultural leaders in Constantinople.

In 1916, some 1,600 Irish nationalists launched the Easter Rising by seizing several key sites in Dublin. (The rising was put down by British forces five days later.)

In 1932, in the Free State of Prussia, the Nazi Party gained a plurality of seats in parliamentary elections.

In 1947, novelist Willa Cather died in New York at age 73.

In 1953, British statesman Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

In 1962, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieved the first satellite relay of a television signal, using NASA’s Echo 1 balloon satellite to bounce a video image from Camp Parks, California, to Westford, Massachusetts.

In 1967, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed when his Soyuz 1 spacecraft smashed into the Earth after his parachutes failed to deploy properly during re-entry; he was the first human spaceflight fatality.

In 1970, the People’s Republic of China launched its first satellite, which kept transmitting a song, “The East Is Red.”