On This Day (April 24)

[MSFixR]

• 1184 BCE - Greeks enter Troy using the Trojan Horse (traditional).
• 1731 - Daniel Defoe, English writer died. (b. 1660) (Defoe was an English writer, journalist, and spy, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest practitioners of the novel, helped popularize the genre in Britain and is even referred to as one of the founders, if not the founder, of the English novel.)
• 1800 – The Library of Congress, today the de facto national library of the United States, was established as part of an act of Congress providing for the transfer of the nation's capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.
• 1877 – Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire, starting the Russo-Turkish War.
• 1914 - William Castle, American film director and producer born. (d. 1977) (13 Ghosts (1960), The Tingler (1959), House on Haunted Hill)
  [*}1915 – The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire began with the arrest and deportation of hundreds of prominent Armenians in Constantinople.
• 1916 – Irish republicans led by teacher and political activist Patrick Pearse began the Easter Rising, a rebellion against British rule in Ireland, and proclaimed the Irish Republic an independent state.
• 1947 - Willa Cather, American writer died. (b. 1873) (Cather is an eminent author who grew up in the state of Nebraska in the United States. She is best known for her depictions of frontier life on the Great Plains in novels such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.)
• 1967 – The Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 1 crashed in Siberia during its return to Earth, killing cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, the first in-flight fatality in the history of spaceflight.
• 1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope was launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery in mission STS-31 (pictured).