This Day In History

• 1898 Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium. On April 19, 1906 Pierre slipped on a wet street and fell in front of a heavy horse-drawn wagon. It ran over his head, killing him instantly. On July 4, 1934, Marie died of aplastic anemia, a blood disease that often results from getting too much radiation.
• In 1914, the first feature-length silent film comedy, "Tillie's Punctured Romance" Staring Charlie Chaplin was released.
• 1968 Apollo 8 was launched on a mission to orbit the moon. That's back when we knew how to do those type of things.
• 1978 Police in Des Plaines, Ill., arrested John W. Gacy Jr. and began unearthing the remains of 33 men and boys that Gacy was later convicted of murdering. He was executed early Tuesday, May 10, 1994 despite a problem with the lethal injection used to kill him.
• 1988 270 people were killed when a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pam Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, sending wreckage crashing to the ground.
• 1990 In a German television interview, Saddam Hussein declared that he would not withdraw from Kuwait by the UN deadline. File under great decisions.