Today on April 2 1513 Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sighted Florida. 1801 During the Napoleonic Wars, the Danish fleet was destroyed by the British at the Battle of Copenhagen. The Danes were pro-democracy and Britain was against it. 1872 G.B. Brayton received a patent for the gas-powered streetcar. 1889 Charles Hall patented aluminum. 1905 The Simplon rail tunnel officially opened. The tunnel went under the Alps and linked Switzerland and Italy. 1910 Karl Harris perfected the process for the artificial synthesis of rubber. 1917 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson presented a declaration of war against Germany to the U.S. Congress. 1935 Sir Watson-Watt was granted a patent for RADAR. It had been shown in Germany two years before, but not patented. 1947 The U.N. Security Council voted to appoint the U.S. as trustee for former Japanese-held Pacific Islands. 1960 France signed an agreement with Madagascar that proclaimed the country an independent state within the French community. 1963 Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King began the first campaign in Birmingham, AL. 1966 South Vietnamese troops joined in demonstrations at Hue and Da Nang for an end to military rule. 1967 In Peking, hundreds of thousands demonstrated against Mao foe Liu Shao-chi. 1972 Burt Reynolds appeared nude in "Cosmopolitan" magazine. 1982 Argentina invaded the British-owned Falkland Islands. The following June Britain took the islands back. 1984 In Jerusalem, three Arab gunmen wounded 48 people when they opened fire into a crowd of shoppers. 1986 On a TWA airliner flying from Rome to Athens a bomb exploded under a seat killing four Americans. 1989 General Prosper Avril, Haiti's military leader, survived a coup attempt. The attempt was apparently provoked by Avril's U.S.-backed efforts to fight drug trafficking. 1990 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein threatened to incinerate half of Israel with chemical weapons if Israel joined a conspiracy against Iraq. 1992 Mob boss John Gotti was convicted in New York of murder and racketeering. He was later sentenced to life in prison. 1996 Russia and Belarus signed a treaty that created a political and economic alliance in an effort to reunite the two former Soviet republics. 1996 Lech Walesa resumed his old job as an electrician at the Gdansk shipyard. He was the former Solidarity union leader who became Poland's first post-war democratic president. 2002 Israeli troops surrounded the Church of the Nativity. More than 200 Palestinians had taken refuge at the church when Israel invaded Bethlehem. 2016 Do smiled.