Eddie Cochran, the man behind “Summertime Blues” and “C’mon Everybody,” was killed on April 17, 1960 when the taxi carrying
him from a show in Bristol, England, crashed en route to the
airport.  

On April 16, 2007, 32 people died after being gunned down
on the campus of Virginia Tech by Seung-Hui Cho, a student
at the college who later died by suicide.

The Virginia Tech shooting began around 7:15 a.m., when
Cho, a 23-year-old senior and English major at Blacksburg-
based Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University,
shot a female freshman and a male resident assistant in a
campus dormitory before fleeing the building.

Police were soon on the scene; unaware of the gunman’s
identity, they initially pursued the female victim’s boyfriend
as a suspect in what they believed to be an isolated domestic-
violence incident.

However, at around 9:40 a.m., Cho, armed with a 9-millimeter
handgun, a 22-caliber handgun and hundreds of rounds of
ammunition, entered a classroom building, chained and locked
several main doors and went from room to room shooting
people. Approximately 10 minutes after the rampage began,
he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The attack left 32 people dead and more than a dozen wounded.

Cho Seung-hui, the Virginia Tech gunman who killed 32
people before turning the gun on himself. Photograph:
AP

Basketball giant Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dominated the NBA in the
1970s and ’80s with his signature sky hook. Led the L.A. Lakers
to five championships. He’s 78 years old today.

From Cape Canaveral, Florida, Apollo 16, the fifth of six U.S.
lunar landing missions, was successfully launched on its
238,000-mile journey to the moon.

Four days later, the three astronauts returned to Earth, safely
splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.