Colonel Robert E. Lee resigns from the United States army two days after he was offered command of the Union army and three days after his native state, Virginia, seceded from the Union. Lee opposed secession, but he was a loyal son of Virginia. His official resignation was only one sentence, but he wrote a longer explanation to his friend and mentor, General Winfield Scott, later that day. Lee had fought under Scott during the Mexican War (1846-48), and he revealed to his former commander the depth of his struggle. Lee spoke with Scott on April 18, and explained that he would have resigned then “but for the struggle it has cost me to…

Two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. At about 11:20 a.m., Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, dressed in long trench coats, began shooting students outside the school before moving inside to continue their rampage. By the time SWAT team officers finally entered the school at about 3:00 p.m., Klebold and Harris had killed 12 fellow students and a teacher, and had wounded another 23 people. Then, around noon, they turned their guns on themselves and committed suicide. The awful crime captured the nation’s attention, prompting an unprecedented search–much of it based on false information–for a scapegoat on whom to pin the blame.…

The first New York state constitution is formally adopted by the Convention of Representatives of the State of New York, meeting in the upstate town of Kingston, on this day in 1777. The constitution began by declaring the possibility of reconciliation between Britain and its former American colonies as remote and uncertain, thereby making the creation of a new New York government necessary for the preservation of internal peace, virtue, and good order. Three governmental branches were created by the new constitution: an executive branch, a judicial branch and a legislative branch. The constitution called for the election of a governor and 24 senators and identified eligible voters as men…

By JULIE DELCOUR World Staff Writer Published: 4/18/2010  2:23 AM Lou Michel recalls without hesitation the moment on a May day in 1999 when Timothy McVeigh delivered a soliloquy so dark, so chilling that the hair rose on the back of the veteran reporter’s neck. Caught in the act of being himself, nothing else McVeigh would say during a 45-hour confession matched that moment for defining America’s worst mass murderer. “I’ve heard your stories many times before,” McVeigh began, as if speaking directly to the survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing rather than into the tape recorder of his biographer. “The specific details may be unique, but the truth is you’re…

John F. Kennedy Inaugural Address Friday, January 20, 1961 Heavy snow fell the night before the inauguration, but thoughts about cancelling the plans were overruled. The election of 1960 had been close, and the Democratic Senator from Massachusetts was eager to gather support for his agenda. He attended Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown that morning before joining President Eisenhower to travel to the Capitol. The Congress had extended the East Front, and the inaugural platform spanned the new addition. The oath of office was administered by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Robert Frost read one of his poems at the ceremony. Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President…

The dream lives on PERSPECTIVE What the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate means to my family. April 03, 2011|By Kara Kennedy Growing up in my family, public service was part of our everyday life. My father taught me and my siblings that we had a special obligation to help people because we were fortunate in so many ways. It was a value he inherited from his parents and that animated his extraordinary life of service, and one that continues to motivate me and my children today. As much as my father loved campaigning and a robust debate, he saw them as a means to a greater…

Mathematicians unearth fractal counting patterns to explain a cryptic claim By Davide Castelvecchi | Thursday, April 14, 2011 | 13 Srinivasa RamanujanImage: Photo Researchers, Inc. For someone who died at the age of 32, the largely self-taught Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan left behind an impressive legacy. Number theorists have now finally managed to make sense of one of his more enigmatic statements, written just one year before his death in 1920. The statement concerned the deceptively simple concept of partitions. Partitions are subdivisions of a whole number into smaller ones. For example, for the number 5 there are seven options: 5?•?1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1?•?1 + 1 + 1 +…

Permanent Address: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=early-human-fossils-from-south-afri-2011-04-18 By Kate Wong | Monday, April 18, 2011 | 9   MINNEAPOLIS—It’s a great irony of paleoanthropology that for all the insights scientists have been able to glean from the fossil record about our early ancestors, the australopithecines (Lucy and her kin), they have precious little to document the origin of our own genus, Homo. They know that Homo descended from one of those australopithecine species and that over the course of that transition our ancestors evolved from chimp-size creatures with short legs and small brains into tall humans with long legs and large brains, among other hallmark traits. But the details of this evolutionary transformation—when the distinctive Homo characteristics arose and why—have remained elusive,…

Real-life ‘X-Files’ reveal policy of destroying documents related to UFO investigations because they would have taken up too much filing space. By John PlattTue, Apr 12 2011 at 10:21 AM EST 153 Comments Photo: Markus Ram/Flickr The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated hundreds of UFO sightings in the 1940s and ’50s, but the agency had a policy of destroying investigation records because they took up too much space. Some of the papers related to these UFO sightings went online this weekend through the FBI’s newly revamped electronic reading room, dubbed The Vault. Previously known as the FBI Records/Freedom of Information and Privacy Act website, the site contains more than 2,000 FBI…

Last Supper was a day earlier, scientist claims Mon Apr 18, 12:31 pm ET LONDON (AFP) – Christians have long celebrated Jesus Christ’s Last Supper on Maundy Thursday but new research released Monday claims to show it took place on the Wednesday before the crucifixion. Professor Colin Humphreys, a scientist at the University of Cambridge, believes it is all due to a calendar mix-up — and asserts his findings strengthen the case for finally introducing a fixed date for Easter. Humphreys uses a combination of biblical, historical and astronomical research to try to pinpoint the precise nature and timing of Jesus’s final meal with his disciples before his death. Researchers have long been puzzled…