Looking backward

10 years ago

April 24, 2013: Watertown: High School students from throughout the county pitted their knowledge about soil, aquatics and forestry against each other on Tuesday. Approximately 16 teams froom eight area schools had a country-level battle of the brains for the 20th annual Envirothon at the New York State Zoo at Thompson Park.

25 years ago

April 24, 1998: The Learning Circle will offer integrated classrooms for Montessori preschoolers this fall. The special-needs program will detect behavioral, physical, emotional, and academic problems and provide early intervention for 3 and 4 year old.

50 years ago

April 24, 1973: An open house at city hall Saturday is set to mark Ogdensburg’s 105th year as a city. The open house by the Ogdensburg Historical Activities Committee, will feature historical exhibits, according to Mayor John F. Byrnes, who has declared Saturday “Ogdensburg-Day” to mark the chartering of the city by New York State on April 27, 1868.

75 years ago

April 24, 1948: Ogdensburg: The Women’s City club is planning to hold a bridge party for the benefit of its student nurse scholarship fund the night of May 5 at 8 in the auditorium of the nurses’ resident at the Hepburn Hospital.

100 years ago

April 24, 1923: W.G. Hamilton of 259 State Street has invented a small attachment for safety match boxes that prevents them from being crushed in the pocket. It is so arranged that a smoker can get a light from a single match in the strongest gale. Mr. Hamilton is well known around Carthage and also with the traveling public, having for years been on the road selling cough syrup, silver polish, and a number of other articles he has invented and manufactured.

125 years ago

April 24, 1898: Watertown: In times like these, when events of great importance happen rapidly, and crowd upon each other, it is a long wait over a Sunday for news. The public anxiety is great and to be shut off from the world of news and hardship. The Times, therefore, as a newspaper, fills the gap by printing this edition for its subscribers, delivering it to such of them as are within reach on this day, without extra charge.

150 years ago

April 24, 1873: Watertown: The Common Council will hold a special meeting on Wednesday evening next for the consideration of the sidewalk question. No other business is to be done, except to look into the matter, and take measures to enforce the ordinance. Owners of dangerous sidewalks will do themselves a special service by attending to the matter beforehand.

The world

1913 – The Woolworth Building, a skyscraper in New York City, is opened.

1914 – The Franck–Hertz experiment, a pillar of quantum mechanics, is presented to the German Physical Society.

1915 – The arrest of 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Istanbul marks the beginning of the Armenian genocide.

1916 – Easter Rising: Irish rebels, led by Patrick Pearse and James Connolly, launch an uprising in Dublin against British rule and proclaim an Irish Republic.

1916 – Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to organise a rescue for the crew of the sunken Endurance.

1918 – World War I: First tank-to-tank combat, during the second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux. Three British Mark IVs meet three German A7Vs.

1922 – The first segment of the Imperial Wireless Chain providing wireless telegraphy between Leafield in Oxfordshire, England, and Cairo, Egypt, comes into operation.

1924 – Thorvald Stauning becomes premier of Denmark (first term).

1926 – The Treaty of Berlin is signed. Germany and the Soviet Union each pledge neutrality in the event of an attack on the other by a third party for the next five years.

1932 – Benny Rothman leads the mass trespass of Kinder Scout, leading to substantial legal reforms in the United Kingdom.

1933 – Nazi Germany begins its persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses by shutting down the Watch Tower Society office in Magdeburg.

1944 – World War II: The SBS launches a raid against the garrison of Santorini in Greece.

1953 – Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

1955 – The Bandung Conference ends: Twenty-nine non-aligned nations of Asia and Africa finish a meeting that condemns colonialism, racism, and the Cold War.

1957 – Suez Crisis: The Suez Canal is reopened following the introduction of UNEF peacekeepers to the region.

1963 – Marriage of Princess Alexandra of Kent to Angus Ogilvy at Westminster Abbey in London.

1965 – Civil war breaks out in the Dominican Republic when Colonel Francisco Caamaño overthrows the triumvirate that had been in power since the coup d’état against Juan Bosch.

1967 – Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when its parachute fails to open. He is the first human to die during a space mission.

1967 – Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland says in a news conference that the enemy had “gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily”.

1970 – China launches Dong Fang Hong I, becoming the fifth nation to put an object into orbit using its own booster.

1970 – The Gambia becomes a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations, with Dawda Jawara as its first President.

1980 – Eight U.S. servicemen die in Operation Eagle Claw as they attempt to end the Iran hostage crisis.

1990 – STS-31: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

1990 – Gruinard Island, Scotland, is officially declared free of the anthrax disease after 48 years of quarantine.

1993 – An IRA bomb devastates the Bishopsgate area of London.

1996 – In the United States, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 is passed into law.

2004 – The United States lifts economic sanctions imposed on Libya 18 years previously, as a reward for its cooperation in eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is inaugurated as the 265th Pope of the Catholic Church taking the name Pope Benedict XVI.

2011 – WikiLeaks starts publishing the Guantanamo Bay files leak.

2013 – A building collapses near Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing 1,129 people and injuring 2,500 others.

2013 – Violence in Bachu County, Kashgar Prefecture, of China’s Xinjiang results in death of 21 people.