WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 2010

Today is Wednesday, April 14, the 104th day of 2010. There are 261 days left in the year.

1611 _ Word ``telescope" is first used (Prince Federico Cesi)

1814 _ Napoleon abdicated and was banished to Elba

1859 _ Charles Dickens' ``A Tale Of Two Cities" published

1865 _ President Abraham Lincoln shot in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth

1894 _ First public showing of Thomas Edison's kinetoscope (moving pictures)

1895 _ First performance of Gustav Mahler's (incomplete) 2nd Symphony

1912 _ The Titanic, launched on May 31, 1911, on route from Southampton to New York with 2,200 passengers, strikes iceberg off the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia at approximately 11:30p.m., and sinks early the next morning (1500-plus death toll)

1963 _ George Harrison is impressed by the unsigned group ``Rolling Stones"

1971 _ President Richard Nixon ends blockade against People's Republic of China

1978 _ Korean Air Lines Boeing 707, fired on by Soviets, crashes in Russia