Today is the 100th day of 2016 and the 21st day of spring.
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TODAY'S HISTORY: In 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War.
In 1940, Germany launched Operation Weseruebung, invading Norway and Denmark.
In 1959, NASA announced the selection of the first seven astronauts, whom the media dubbed the "Mercury Seven."
In 2003, Iraqis celebrating the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime destroyed a 20-foot statue of Hussein in Baghdad's Firdaus Square.
TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS: Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), poet; Curly Lambeau (1898-1965), football player/coach; Paul Robeson (1898-1976), athlete/actor/singer; Hugh Hefner (1926- ), publisher; Carl Perkins (1932-1998), singer-songwriter; Peter Gammons (1945- ), sportswriter; Dennis Quaid (1954- ), actor; Joe Scarborough (1963- ), TV personality; Jeffrey Zucker (1965- ), TV executive; Cynthia Nixon (1966- ), actress; Jay Baruchel (1982- ), actor; Leighton Meester (1986- ), actress; Kristen Stewart, (1990- ), actress.
TODAY'S FACT: The "Mercury Seven," selected on this day in 1959, were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton.
TODAY'S SPORTS: In 1965, the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, hosted the first Major League Baseball game to be played indoors. The Astros defeated the New York Yankees in the exhibition game by a score of 2-1.
TODAY'S QUOTE: "An artist is only an artist thanks to his exquisite sense of beauty -- a sense which provides him with intoxicating delights, but at the same time implying and including a sense, equally exquisite, of all deformity and disproportion." -- Charles Baudelaire, "L'art romantique"
TODAY'S NUMBER: $384 million -- estimated cost of the Mercury program (1959-1963), NASA's first human spaceflight project.
TODAY'S MOON: Between new moon (April 7) and first quarter moon (April 13).