By The Associated Press

                      - Today is Good Friday, April 2, the 92nd day of 1999. There are
                        273 days left in the year.

                      - On April 2, 1917, President Wilson asked Congress to declare war
                        against Germany, saying, "The world must be made safe for
                        democracy."
                      - In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida.
                      - In 1792, Congress passed the Coinage Act, which authorized
                        establishment of the U.S. Mint.
                      - In 1805, storyteller Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense,
                        Denmark.
                      - In 1860, the first Italian Parliament met at Turin.
                      - In 1865, Confederate President Davis and most of his Cabinet
                        fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, Va.
                      - In 1872, Samuel F.B. Morse, developer of the electric telegraph,
                        died in New York.
                      - In 1956, the soap operas "As the World Turns" and "The Edge
                        of Night" premiered on CBS television.
                      - In 1974, French president Georges Pompidou died in Paris.
                      - In 1982, several thousand troops from Argentina seized the
                        disputed Falkland Islands, located in the south Atlantic, from
                        Britain. Britain seized the islands back the following June.
                      - In 1986, four American passengers were killed when a bomb exploded
                        aboard a TWA jetliner en route from Rome to Athens, Greece.
                      - In 1995, baseball owners accepted the players' union offer to
                        play without a contract, ending the longest and costliest strike in
                        the history of professional sports.
                      - Ten years ago: Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev began a visit
                        to Cuba amid differences with President Fidel Castro over the type
                        of reforms Gorbachev was instituting in the Soviet Union.
                      - Five years ago: President Clinton warned Americans against
                        "demagogues of division" in his weekly radio address, while
                        calling for greater personal responsibility and cooperation to
                        overcome the nation's problems. Consumer reporter Betty Furness
                        died in Hartsdale, N.Y., at age 78.
                      - One year ago: Shaking their fists in rage, thousands of mourners
                        marched in a funeral procession in the West Bank for a top Hamas
                        bombmaker (Mohiyedine Sharif) hailed by Palestinians as a martyr
                        and condemned by Israel as a terrorist.

                      *Today's Birthdays*

                      - Actor Buddy Ebsen is 91.
                      - Actor Sir Alec Guinness is 85.
                      - Actor Dabbs Greer is 82.
                      - Actress Sharon Acker is 64.
                      - Singer Leon Russell is 58.
                      - Jazz musician Larry Coryell is 56.
                      - Actress Linda Hunt is 54.
                      - Singer Emmylou Harris is 52.
                      - Actress Pamela Reed is 50.
                      - Rock musician Leon Wilkerson (Lynyrd Skynyrd) is 47.
                      - Actress Debralee Scott is 46.
                      - Actor Ron Palillo is 45.
                      - Country singer Billy Dean is 37.
                      - Actor Jeremy Garrett ("Legacy") is 23.