Today is Monday, April 25, the 116th day of 2016. There are 250 days left in the year.
On this date:
In 1901, New York Gov. Benjamin Barker Odell Jr. signed an automobile registration bill, which imposed a 15 mph speed limit on highways.
In 1944, the United Negro College Fund was founded.
In 1945, during World War II, U.S. and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe River, a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany’s defenses. Delegates from some 50 countries gathered in San Francisco to organize the United Nations.
In 1983, 10-year-old Samantha Smith of Manchester, Maine, received a reply from Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov to a letter she’d written expressing concern about possible nuclear war; Andropov reassured Samantha that the Soviet Union did not want war, and he invited her to visit his country, a trip Samantha made in July.
In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed in orbit from the space shuttle Discovery. (It was discovered that the telescope’s primary mirror was flawed, requiring the installation of corrective components to achieve optimal focus.)
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