Today is Thursday, April 17, the 108th day of 2008. 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
1932 _ Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia ends slavery
1969 _ Czechoslovakia's Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek deposed
1969 _ Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy
1971 _ Egypt, Libya and Syria form federation (FAR)
1971 _ People's Republic Bangladesh forms, under sheik Mujib ur-Rahman
1986 _ IBM produces first megabit-chip