By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Saturday, April 20, the 110th day of 2019. There are 255 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On April 20, 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.

On this date:

In 1898, the United States moved closer to war with Spain as President William McKinley signed a congressional resolution passed the day before recognizing Cuban independence and authorizing U.S. military intervention to achieve that goal.

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 1948, United Auto Workers president Walter P. Reuther was shot and seriously wounded at his home in Detroit.

In 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools. National Public Radio made its on-air debut with live coverage of a U.S. Senate hearing on the Vietnam War.

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 1992, the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness took place at London’s Wembley Stadium. Comedian Benny Hill died in his Greater London flat at age 68.

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.

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