@rh18bold:Today in History

Today is Thursday, April 8, the 98th day of 2010. There are 267 days left in the year.

On this date

In 1513, explorer Juan Ponce de Leon and his expedition began exploring the Florida coastline.

In 1904, Great Britain and France signed the "Entente Cordiale", an agreement settling all disputes between the two.

In 1913, China's first parliament opened in Peking.

In 1939, one day after invading Albania, Italian troops took the capital Tirana, and King Zog fled to Greece.

In 1946, the League of Nations opened its final session in Geneva before being replaced by the United Nations.

In 1953, in Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta and five companions were convicted of "managing" the Mau Mau insurrection against British rule and were each sentenced to seven years' hard labour.

In 1988, TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart resigned from the Assemblies of God after he was defrocked for rejecting an order from the church's national leaders to stop preaching for a year amid reports he'd consorted with a prostitute.

In 1990, Ryan White, the teenage AIDS patient whose battle for acceptance gained national attention, died in Indianapolis at age 18.

In 1994, Kurt Cobain, singer and guitarist for the grunge band Nirvana, was found dead in Seattle from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound; he was 27.

In 2000, the Central Intelligence Agency confirmed that personnel action had been taken following the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy during the Nato war against Yugoslavia; one employee was reportedly fired.

Thought for Today

"The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything." — Susan Sontag, American author and critic (1933-2004).