[goofywife]

1999: Columbine shootings shock nation

Two students shot and killed 13 people and wounded 24 others today before committing suicide at Columbine High School outside of Littleton, Colorado. The students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, had previously made death threats against students and teachers online.

"The attackers marched into the library of Columbine High School with guns and pipe bombs, demanding that 'all jocks stand up. We're going to kill every one of you,' said student Aaron Cohn," reported the Syracuse Herald Journal on April 21, 1999. "Bombs were found in and around the school, including in two cars in the school parking lot. More than 11 hours after the shootings, a bomb on a timer blew up, but no one was injured. Meantime, frantic parents awaited word of their children into the night, watching as tearful students were reunited with their families."

NOTE: 2007’s Virginia Tech shooting reminded many of the 1999 Columbine massacre. With 33 people killed, including the gunman, Virginia Tech became the deadliest U.S. school shooting, making Columbine the third deadliest, just behind the 15 people killed by Charles Whitman at the University of Texas in 1966.

1985: FBI surrounds cult compound

The FBI began a three-day standoff today with a religious cult in northern Arkansas. The negotiations with the cult, The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, started when federal agents tried to serve the group's leader, James Ellison, with a warrant for "conspiracy to manufacture, possess and transfer automatic weapons," according to an article in The Chronicle Telegram on April 20, 1985. "Up to 80 heavily-armed federal, state and local officers, faces blackened and wearing camouflage clothing, laid siege Friday to the 224-acre compound, which contains scattered stone buildings with flat roofs and a radio tower." explained the article. NOTE: The standoff ended peacefully on the morning of the 4th day of the siege, with Ellison and his militia surrendering.

1945: U.S. troops capture Leipzig

"The German army surrendered this fifth largest city of the reich [Leipzig] to the U.S. First army at 11 a.m. today after fighting raged fiercely throughout the night and morning," informed the Joplin Globe on April 20, 1945. "After firing ceased today, after a six-day siege, thousands of the city's inhabitants emerged from their hiding places, some of them waving and cheering in delight that the war was over for them. A white flag waved from each building still standing in the wreckage." NOTE: As the surrender took place in Leipzig, the U.S. army also captured most of Nuremberg and moved tanks south to Munich.

1914: Strikers slaughtered in Ludlow

Dozens of men, women and children were killed today when violence broke out between militiamen and striking coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado. "The Ludlow tent colony presented a scene of death and desolation today, only four or five of the tents remaining standing. Soldiers declare that quantities of ammunition were exploded by the blaze that swept the tent colony during the night," reported The Lincoln Daily Star on April 21, 1914.

1902: Marie Curie isolates radium

Polish scientist Marie Curie isolated the element of radium today. "In July, 1898, they announced their joint discovery of a new element – polonium, named for Mme. Curie's native country. A few months later they announced the discovery of radium. But not until 1902 did their researches permit them to establish its existence and character," explained The Chronicle Telegram on July 5, 1934. NOTE: In 1903, the husband and wife team shared a Nobel Prize in physics with French scientist Henri Becquerel. In 1911, Marie was awarded a second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry, for her work with radium.