9 April 2025 (MIA)

1873 – The first train from Thessaloniki arrived in Veles, and therefore, April 9 had been declared as Macedonian Railways Day.

1682 – French explorer Robert La Salle reached the Mississippi River.

1865 – Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.

1939 – Singer Marian Anderson performed a concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after she was denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

1940 – Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.

1942 – American and Philippine defenders on Bataan capitulated to Japanese forces; the surrender was followed by the notorious “Bataan Death March” which claimed nearly 10,000 lives.

1947 – A series of tornadoes in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas claimed 169 lives.

In 1959, NASA announced the selection of America’s first seven astronauts: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton.

1963 – British statesman Winston Churchill was made an honorary U.S. citizen.

1965 – The newly built Houston Astrodome featured its first baseball game, an exhibition between the Astros and the New York Yankees. (The Astros won, 2-to-1.)

1983 – The Russian pedagogue and choreographer at the Ballet of the Macedonian National Theatre, Aleksandar Dobrohotov died in Skopje. He was the first ballet dancer at the Skopje’s Ballet scene. He was born in 1909.

1993 – The Rev. Benjamin Chavis was chosen to head the NAACP, succeeding Benjamin Hooks.

1996 – In a dramatic shift of purse-string power, President Clinton signed a line-item veto bill into law. (However, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the veto as unconstitutional in 1998.)

1992 – Former Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega was convicted in Miami of eight drug and racketeering charges; he is serving a 30-year prison sentence. Britain’s Conservatives scored a come-from-behind national election victory, becoming the first British political party to win four straight elections this century.

1997 – The CIA apologized to Gulf War veterans for failing to do a better job in supplying information to U.S. troops who blew up an Iraqi bunker later found to contain chemical weapons. Social Security officials pulled the plug on an Internet site that provided individual earnings and retirement benefit records amid privacy concerns.

2001 – President George W. Bush sent Congress details of his $1.96 trillion budget for fiscal 2002, in which he targeted scores of federal programs to make room for his 10-year, $1.6 trillion tax cut.

2003 – American Marines pulled down Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad after U.S. commanders declared his rule ended.

2005 – Britain’s Prince Charles marries Camilla Parker Bowles.