NOW YOU KNOW

• On April 1, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon signed a measure banning cigarette advertising on radio and television, to take effect after Jan. 1, 1971.
• On April 2, 2010, on this date five years ago, Pope John Paul 2nd, who'd helped topple communism in Europe and left a deeply conservative stamp on the church that he'd led for 26 years, died in his Vatican apartment at the age of 84.
• On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, was shot to death at the Lorrainre Motel in Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray later pleaded guilty to assassinating King, then spent the rest of his life claiming his innocence before dying in prison in 1998.
• On April 5, 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death following their conviction in New York on charges of conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union.
• On April 6, 1909, American explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson and four Inuits became the first men to reach the North Pole.
• On April 7, 1860, Will Keith Kellogg, founder of cereal maker Kellogg Co., was born in Battle Creek, Mich..
• On April 8, 1513, explorer Juan Ponce de Leon and his expedition began exploring the Flordia coastline.
• On April 9, 1942, American and Philippine defenders on Bataan capitulated to Japanese forces; the surrender was followed by the notorious Bataan Death March which claimed thousands of lives.
• On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 blasted off on its ill-fated mission to the moon.  (Although the spacecraft was crippled when an oxygen tank ruptured in mid-flight, the crew managed to return safely.)
• On April 12, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Ga., at age 63; he was succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman.