1827 ~ The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was incorporated, becoming the first railroad offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.

1833 ~ Birthday of Alfred von Schlieffen, German field marshal.

1854 ~ The U.S. Republican Party was organized in Ripon, Wisconsin as a party opposed to the expansion of slavery.

1901 ~ Birthday of Linus Pauling, double Nobel Prize winner: Chemistry 1954 and Peace 1962.

1935 ~ Wallace Carothers discovered Nylon.

1953 ~ James Watson and Francis Crick announced that they had determined the chemical structure of DNA. The formal announcement followed on April 25 following publication in Nature.

For those who would like to learn more about this interesting development:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth..._50/default.stm
http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/archive.html

In Crick’s words: http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/Crick3.pdf

1979 ~ Death of "Mr. Ed", the talking horse.

1983 ~ The final episode of M*A*S*H was broadcast in the U.S.

1986 ~ Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was assassinated in Stockholm.

1993 ~ Four Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) agents and six Branch Davidians were killed when the agents tried to serve warrants on the Davidians.

__________________
Eudaimonia