Today in history—April 24

1184 BC: After ten years of siege, Greeks finally enter into the city of Troy by hiding in a very, very large wooden horse.

1704: Bookseller John Campbell publishes the first issue of America’s first regular newspaper, the Boston News-Letter.

1800: President Adams signs legislation appropriating $5,000 to found the Library of Congress.

1815: Anthony Trollope is born at London.  “Of all novelists in any country,” W. H. Auden would later write, “Trollope best understands the role of money.  Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.”

1889: Sir Stafford Cripps, the upper-class barrister who in various economic posts will do more than anyone to nationalize British industry in the post-war years, is born at London.

1913: The 60-story Woolworth Building, the tallest in the world and labeled the “Cathedral of Commerce,” opens in New York City.

1925: Football coach John Scopes fills in for the regular science teacher at the Dayton (Tenn.) school.  Although he doesn’t actually teach the part of the book dealing with evolution that day, he agrees, at the behest of a group of publicity-seeking businessmen, to the named defendant in the subsequent show trial brought by his friends in the prosecutor’s office.

1934: Shirley MacLean Beaty, who will achieve stardom as “Shirley MacLaine” but immortality as the plaintiff in Parker v. Twentieth Century-Fox, is born at Richmond, Virginia.

1974: William Alexander “Bud” Abbott dies at Woodland Hills, California.  The income from the comedy team “Abbott & Costello” was split 60-40 in favor of Abbott because, as Costello explained, “Comics are a dime a dozen.  Good straight men are hard to find.”

1981: IBM introduces its first personal computer.

1994: Danish confectioners create the world’s largest lollipop, weighing in a 3,011 pounds.  Six years later Hershey’s Jolly Rancher division will rewrite the record with a 4,016 pound cherry-flavored effort.