April second

Today's Highlight in History:
On April second, 1917, President Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany, saying, "The world must be made safe for democracy."

On this date:
In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida.

In 1792, Congress passed the Coinage Act, which authorized establishment of the US Mint.

In 1805, storyteller Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark.

In 1860, the first Italian Parliament met at Turin.

In 1865, Confederate President Davis and most of his Cabinet fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.

In 1872, Samuel F.B. Morse, developer of the electric telegraph, died in New York.

In 1956, the soap operas "As the World Turns" and "The Edge of Night" premiered on CBS television.

In 1974, French president Georges Pompidou died in Paris.

In 1982, several thousand troops from Argentina seized the disputed Falkland Islands, located in the south Atlantic, from Britain. (Britain seized the islands back the following June.)

In 1986, four American passengers were killed when a bomb exploded aboard a TWA jetliner en route from Rome to Athens, Greece.

Ten years ago: In a conciliatory gesture, the president of Lithuania invited Kremlin officials to discuss the republic's secession drive. The University of Nevada at Las Vegas won the NCAA college basketball championship, defeating Duke 103-to-73.

Five years ago: Baseball owners accepted the players' union offer to play without a contract, ending the longest and costliest strike in the history of professional sports. Members of the extremist group Hamas accidentally set off a bomb that tore through their hideout in the Gaza Strip, killing six people.

One year ago: The Labor Department reported that the nation's unemployment rate fell to a 29-year low of four-point-two percent in March 1999.

"No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that others are behind the time."

-- Martha Graham, modern dance pioneer (1894-1991).