President Woodrow Wilson delivers a declaration of war to the joint session of Congress, in Washington, April 2, 1917. (AP Photo)
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 6, 2025
Today in history:
On April 6, 1917, the United States entered World War I as the House joined the Senate in approving a declaration of war against Germany that was then signed by President Woodrow Wilson.
In 1830, Joseph Smith and others met in Fayette, New York to form the Church of Christ—now known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
In 1862, the Civil War Battle of Shiloh began in Tennessee as Confederate forces launched a surprise attack against Union troops, who beat back the Confederates the following day.
In 1896, the first modern Olympic games formally opened in Athens, Greece.
In 1954, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., responding to CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow’s broadside against him on “See It Now,” claimed in remarks filmed for the program that Murrow had, in the past, “engaged in propaganda for Communist causes.”
In 1968, 41 people were killed a pair of explosions spurred by a natural gas leak at a sporting goods store in downtown Richmond, Indiana.
In 1994, Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira were killed when the jet they rode in was shot down by surface-to-air missiles as it attempted to land in Kigali, Rwanda.
In 2012, five Black people were shot, three fatally, in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Jake England and Alvin Watts, who admitted targeting the victims because of race, pleaded guilty to murder, and were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Olympics revived
Pierre, baron de Coubertin, a founder of the International Olympic Committee and its president from 1896 to 1925, realized his goal of reviving the Olympics when the first modern Games opened in Athens this day in 1896.