Today in History.

On this date in 1865, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.

Today is Thursday, April 9, the 99th day of 2015. There are 266 days left in the year.

On this date:

In 1682, French explorer Robert de La Salle claimed the Mississippi River Basin for France.

In 1913, the first game was played at Ebbets Field, the newly built home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 1-0.

In 1914, the Tampico Incident took place as eight U.S. sailors were arrested by Mexican authorities for allegedly entering a restricted area and held for a short time before being released.

In 1939, singer Marian Anderson performed a concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. after being denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

In 1940, during World War II, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.

In 1942, American and Philippine defenders on Bataan capitulated to Japanese forces; the surrender was followed by the notorious Bataan Death March.

In 1945, German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 39, was executed by the Nazis at the Flossenburg concentration camp.

In 1959, NASA presented its first seven astronauts: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton. Renowned U.S. architect Frank Lloyd Wright, 91, died in Phoenix, Ariz.

In 1965, the newly built Astrodome in Houston featured its first baseball game, an exhibition between the Astros and the New York Yankees, with President Lyndon B. Johnson in attendance. (The Astros won, 2-1, in 12 innings.)

In 1983, the space shuttle Challenger ended its first mission with a safe landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

In 1996, in a dramatic shift of purse-string power, President Bill Clinton signed a line-item veto...