01|A spring storm strikes the Northeast from New Jersey to New Hampshire. More than two and a half feet (78 centimeters) of snow fall, closing roads, airports, and schools and cutting power to hundreds of thousands of people in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. The National Weather Service brands it the third worst storm in Boston history.|
02|The U.S. Department of Agriculture announces that 153 Michigan school children have been diagnosed with hepatitis A, a viral infection of the liver. Authorities determine that the disease was transmitted through contaminated strawberries imported from Mexico. Whether the strawberries became contaminated in the field or during processing was unknown.|
03|Helmut Kohl, architect of the 1990 unification of East and West Germany, announces on his 67th birthday that he will run in 1998 for a fifth term as chancellor. The only person to hold the chancellery longer than Kohl, who has been in office for more than 14 years, was Otto von Bismarck, who united Germany in 1871 and remained in power for the next 19 years.|
04|The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that unemployment in March 1997 dropped to 5.2 percent, matching the lowest unemployment level since 1989. The government also announces that hourly earnings rose by 0.4 percent in March, and overtime reached a record 4.9 hours per week per worker.|
05|Poet Allen Ginsberg, whose early works helped define the Beat Generation and shape the social activism of the 1960's and 1970's, dies of liver cancer at his home in New York City.|
06|Algerian eyewitnesses report an outbreak of civilian murders carried out by Islamic militants who have battled the government in a civil war that has raged for five years. More than 90 civilians, according to unconfirmed reports, have been killed since April 3, including 52 people in the town of Medea, south of the capital, Algiers. The same roving bands of Islamic militants killed as many of 400 civilians during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in January and February of 1997.|
07|Government troops in Lubumbashi, Zaire, the country's second-largest city, mutiny and join armed rebels seeking to overthrow the government. The rebels are led by Laurent Kabila, who has waged a civil war against Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seiko since October 1996.|
08|A federal judge declares a controversial California designed to end affirmative action by state agencies to be constitutional. California voters approved the measure--Proposition 209--in general elections in November 1996, but a federal district court judge had blocked the measure from taking effect. In the appeals court opinion, Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain wrote, "A system which permits one judge to block with the stroke of a pen what 4,736,180 state residents voted to enact as law tests the integrity of our constitutional democracy."|
09|The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reveals highly detailed photographs that suggest water may exist on Europa, a moon of Jupiter. The photos reveal long fracture lines and patterns resembling spider webs on the planet's surface, suggesting cracks across massive icefields. NASA scientists speculate that a thin crust of ice covers a global ocean on Europa and that heat generated by radioactive decay of elements in the moon's rocky core keep the ocean liquid.|
10|A German court convicts four men of the 1992 assassinations of Iranian opposition leaders in Berlin, ruling that the killings came at the orders of Iran's top leaders. Within hours, each country had withdrawn its ambassador and expelled four of the other country's diplomats. Germany warned its citizens not to travel to Iran. The European Union also invited its members to recall their ambassadors to Iran.|
11|India's coalition government, led by Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda, falls after 10 months in power. Gowda's defeat came after he lost the backing of the powerful Congress Party, which has held power for most of the 50 years since India's independence.|
12|The Red River of the North, flowing north into Canada, crests at more than 20 feet (6 meters) above flood stage at Fargo, North Dakota. Triggered by melting snow, the flooding is the worst in the 1900's, and substantial amounts of snow remain on the ground. Nearly 10 feet (3 meters) of snow fell on Fargo during the winter of 1996-1997.|
13|Twenty-one-year old Tiger Woods wins the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, with a 72-hole score of 270, shattering the Masters record of 271 set by Jack Nicklaus and Raymond Floyd. Woods is the youngest player to win the tournament.|
14|United States Attorney General Janet Reno ignores the demands of Republican leaders in Congress and refuses to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate President Bill Clinton's campaign financing. Basing her decision on the provisions of the independent counsel law, which links specific evidence of a crime with the appointment of a special prosecutor, Reno states: "We have no specific, credible evidence that any covered White House official may have committed a federal crime in respect of any of these issues."|
15|A fire, fanned by high winds, rages through some 70,000 tents housing tens of thousands of people from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Thailand who had journeyed to Mecca for the hajj, the annual pilgrimage that is one of Islam's holiest rituals. At least 340 people die and more than 1,300 people are injured.|
16|Government investigators recommend that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted on charges of fraud and breach of trust. The Israeli minister of police alleges that in January 1997 Netanyahu appointed a close political ally to the office of attorney general. The man was to arrange a plea bargain in a corruption trial for a key member of Netanyahu's coalition, but was driven from office in less than 48 hours by critics who claimed he lacked necessary qualifications.|
17|Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich (R., Ga.) announces that he will pay the $300,000 fine levied against him in January 1997, when he was censured for violating House ethics rules. Gingrich says he will pay the fine with a loan from Robert Dole, former senator and 1996 Republican presidential candidate. Dole's terms included unspecified collateral, 10 percent interest, and eight years before repayment begins.|
18|Scientists in the United States report finding the earliest known primate fossils, making the 20.6-million-year-old creature the oldest ancestor of human beings and monkeys. The researchers, led by anthropologist Daniel Gebo of the University of Illinois in Champaign, examined fossils of teeth, face and backbones collected in Uganda in the 1960's and during 1994 and 1995 to identify the primate, which they named Morotopithecus bishopi.|
19|India's coalition government names 77-year-old Inder K. Gujral prime minister, ending the political chaos that brought down the previous prime minister, H. D. Deve Gowda.|
20|The attorney general of Israel, Elyakim Rubinstein, announces that Israeli prosecutors will not bring charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for corruption. He notes that the Israeli police recommendation to indict the prime minister was based on insufficient evidence.|
21|At Grand Forks, North Dakota, the Red River of the North, swollen by record levels of melting snow, crests at 54 feet (16.5 meters), nearly double its flood stage. Ninety percent of the city, now empty of its 50,000 inhabitants, is under water--in some areas to levels of 15 feet (4.5 meters). Officials believe residents will be unable to return to their houses for at least three weeks.|
22|Peruvian soldiers storm the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru, and rescue all but one of the 72 hostages taken prisoner by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Army on Dec. 18, 1996. All 14 of the revolutionaries are killed in the assault, as are 2 soldiers and 1 hostage. During the four months of stalemate, the Marxist guerrillas attempted to obtain the release of jailed comrades. They released 418 of the original 490 people taken hostage during a party given by the ambassador in honor of the Emperor of Japan.|
23|Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed announces that he will leave the coalition. Reed is credited with transforming the not-for-profit religious organization into a major power in conservative politics. Reed says that he will work as a political consultant to Christian-oriented political candidates.|
24|At Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences, an international team of paleontologists announce the recent discovery in China of an extraordinary trove of dinosaur fossils. Although little of the area has been excavated, the team has already unearthed unique finds, including the fossilized internal organs of dinosaurs and the fossil of a dinosaur containing a mammal it had just eaten. Scientists believe that the dinosaurs, as well as fossils of a primitive bird, mammals, insects, and plants, were killed in a volcanic eruption, which immediately buried the entire area in ash.|
25|A federal district judge in Greensboro, North Carolina, rules that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has the authority to regulate tobacco as a drug. The case was the first test of the federal agency's 1996 assertion that nicotine is an addictive drug delivered in controlled doses by cigarettes, and its sale and advertisement, therefore, should be regulated.|
26|The Montana legislature passes a law that allows judges to sentence sex offenders to regular injections of chemicals designed to reduce sexual drive. Such injections are currently given to sex offenders in Europe and California. The Montana law stipulates that judges may substitute injections for prison if the offender has committed a second sexual offense or a particularly heinous first offense. The bill, according to state legislators, will both reduce crime and provide considerable savings on prison incarcerations.|
27|A Texas couple is abducted and held hostage in a trailer in the Davis Mountains of West Texas by members of a militant group that calls itself the Republic of Texas. The group's leader, Richard L. McLaren, announces that the hostages, whom he calls "prisoners of war," were abducted in response to the arrests of followers of the group, which holds that Texas remains an independent nation because its 1845 annexation by the United States was illegal. McLaren declares that the Republic of Texas is at war with the United States and demands the release of members of his group currently under arrest. He also demands that voters be allowed to determine "once and for all" if the 18 million residents of Texas want independence.|
28|Astrophysicists announce at a meeting in Williamsburg, Virginia, that they have discovered a plume of antimatter streaming out as far as 3,500 light-years from the core of the Milky Way, the galaxy in which Earth is located. Antimatter consists of particles identical to particles of matter except they carry an electrical charge opposite that of matter. When matter and antimatter meet, both are annihilated. The exact nature and cause of the plume, which Charles Dermer, of the Naval Research Laboratory, described as "a fountain of annihilating death from exploding stars," remains unknown.|
29|Lori Fortier, a key witness for the prosecution of Timothy J. McVeigh, the man accused of bombing the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in April 1995 testifies in federal court in Denver that he called the building "an easy target" and told her he planned to blow it up. Fortier describes how McVeigh used soup cans to show how he planned to create a massive bomb by packing a rented truck with barrels of fertilizer and racing fuel. The object of the bombing, according to Fortier, was to take "action against the government" by killing federal law-enforcement agents who had been involved in the 1993 Branch Davidian confrontation in Waco, Texas.|
30|After months of delay, the U.S. Senate confirms the appointment of Alexis Herman as Secretary of Labor by a vote of 85 to 13. Majority leader Trent Lott allowed the confirmation vote to be brought to the floor after President Bill Clinton reversed a decision to issue an executive order awarding large federal construction contracts to companies with unionized labor. Republicans objected to what they considered the encouragement of unionized labor by the government.|
