Today is Wednesday, April 21, the 111th day of 2010. There are 254 days left in the year.

On this date

In 1509, King Henry VII died; he was succeeded by his 17-year-old son, Henry VIII.

In 1649, the Maryland Toleration Act, which provided for freedom of worship for all Christians, was passed by the Maryland assembly.

In 1910, author American novelist Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) died. His masterpieces "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" were drawn from his boyhood experiences.

In 1918, Baron Manfred von Richthofen, Germany's top aviator in the Second World War, was killed in action. Known as "The Red Baron", he shot down 80 enemy aircraft.

In 1960, Brazil inaugurated its new capital, Brasilia, transferring the seat of national government from Rio de Janeiro.

In 1967, a military coup in Athens established the regime of the "Greek Colonels".

In 1971, Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier, president of Haiti since 1957, died. He ran the country as a dictatorship and created a gangster militia known as the Tontons Macoutes.

In 1975, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned after ten years in office as Communist forces closed on Saigon.

In 1989, tens of thousands of students and workers poured into Beijing's Tiananmen Square in defiance of official warnings against anti-government protests.

In 1999, Nato warplanes blasted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's party headquarters in Belgrade.

In 2000, the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament overwhelmingly approved the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Thought for Today

"I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together'," — Mark Twain (1835-1910).