SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 2010

Today is Saturday, April 17, the 107th day of 2010. There are 258 days left in the year.

1492 _ Christopher Columbus signs contract with Spain to find the Indies

1521 _ Martin Luther is excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church

1534 _ Sir Thomas More confined in London Tower

1629 _ first commercial fishery established

1956 _ USSR's Cominform (Parliament) dissolves

1969 _ Czechoslovakia's Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek deposed

1971 _ People's Republic Bangladesh forms, under sheik Mujib ur-Rahman

1975 _ Phnom Penh fell to Communist insurgents, ending Cambodia's five-year war

1983 _ India entered space age launching SLV-3 rocket

1986 _ IBM produces first megabit-chip