Today in HistoryToday is Monday, April 9, the 99th day of 2007. There are 266 days left in the year.

ON THIS DATE<$>

In 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in central Virginia.

In 1942, after four months of siege, US and Filipino forces on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines capitulated to the Japanese. The surrender was followed by the notorious “Bataan Death March” which claimed nearly 10,000 lives

In 1981, Robert (Bobby) Sands, an IRA hunger striker, won a seat in the British parliament in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election in Northern Ireland.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.” — Katherine Mansfield, New Zealander author (1888-1923)