Today is Monday, April 19, the 109th day of 2010. There are 256 days left in the year.

On this date

In 1775, the North American Revolutionary War began with the battles of Lexington and Concord.

In 1897, the first Boston Marathon was held; winner John J. McDermott ran the course in two hours, 55 minutes and ten seconds.

In 1943, tens of thousands of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but ultimately futile battle against Nazi forces.

In 1951, US General Douglas MacArthur, relieved of his Far East command by US President Harry S. Truman, bid farewell in an address to Congress in which he quoted a line from a ballad: "Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."

In 1993, the 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended as fire destroyed the structure after federal agents began smashing their way in; dozens of people, including sect leader David Koresh, were killed.

In 1995, a truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. Timothy McVeigh was later convicted of federal murder charges and executed.

In 1999, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder declared a new "Berlin Republic" as parliament sat for the first time in Berlin's newly renovated Reichstag after moving from the postwar West German capital Bonn.

In 2005, conservative Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope in the first conclave of the new millennium; he took the name Benedict XVI.

Thought for Today

"The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust." — Elizabeth Bowen, Irish-born author (1899-1973).