Today’s Highlights

On April 16, 2007, Seung-hui Cho, a 23-year-old Virginia Tech student, killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus before taking his own life. It remains the deadliest school history in US history.

On this date

1945: A Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea torpedoed the ship MV Goya, which Germany was using to transport civilian refugees and wounded soldiers. As many as 7,000 people died as the ship broke apart and sank minutes after being struck.

1947: The French cargo ship Grandcamp, carrying over 2,000 tons of ammonium nitrate, blew up in the harbor in Texas City, Texas. A nearby ship, the High Flyer, which was carrying ammonium nitrate and sulfur, caught fire and exploded the following day. The combined blasts and fires killed nearly 600 people and injured 5,000 in the worst industrial accident in U.S. history.

1963: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in which the civil rights activist responded to a group of local clergymen who had criticized him for leading street protests. King defended his tactics, writing, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

1972: Apollo 16 blasted off for the moon with astronauts John Young, Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly on board.

Today’s birthdays

Singer Bobby Vinton is 90. Basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is 78. Football coach Bill Belichick is 73. Actor Ellen Barkin is 71. Singer Jimmy Osmond is 62. Actor Jon Cryer is 60. Actor-comedian Martin Lawrence is 60. Actor Peter Billingsley is 54. Rapper Chance the Rapper is 32. Actor Anya Taylor-Joy is 29.