Today’s Highlights

On April 18, 1906, the deadliest earthquake in U.S. history struck San Francisco, followed by raging fires across the city. More than 3,000 people are believed to have been killed by the quake, which was estimated to have reached as high as 8.3 magnitude on the Richter scale.

On this date

1775: Paul Revere began his famous ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Massachusetts, warning colonists that British Regular troops were approaching.

1942: In the first World War II attack on the Japanese mainland, 16 U.S. Army Air Force B-25 bombers conducted an air raid, led by Lt. Col. James Doolittle, over Tokyo and several other Japanese cities.

1955: Physicist Albert Einstein died at age 76.

1978: The Senate approved the Panama Canal Treaty, providing for the complete turnover of control of the waterway to Panama on the last day of 1999.

1983: 63 people, including 17 Americans, were killed at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, by a suicide bomber driving a van laden with explosives.

2015: A ship carrying migrants from Africa sank in the Mediterranean off Libya. As many as 700 people are believed to have drowned.

2019: The final report from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation was made public. It outlined Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election but “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”