Following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 2:
1905 – The Simplon rail tunnel under the Alps linking Switzerland with Italy officially opened.
1974 – French president Georges Pompidou died in office.
1982 – Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, leading to a war in which it tried to wrest them from British control.
1992 – Mafia boss John Gotti, nicknamed “Teflon Don” after earlier attempts to try him, was convicted of murder and racketeering in New York.
1998 – Maurice Papon, an official in collaborationist Vichy France, was convicted of arresting Jews to be sent to Nazi death camps in 1942-1944 when he was secretary-general of the Bordeaux prefect’s office.
2003 – Riot police block protesters trying to march to the National Assembly in Seoul after a vote to send 700 medical and engineering personnel to Iraq.
2004 – NATO expanded to 26 members when former communist countries Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the organisation.
2005 – Polish-born Pope John Paul II, who headed the Roman Catholic Church for 26 years and played a crucial role in the fall of communism in Europe, died. He was 84.
2006 – Iran said it had test-fired what it described as the world’s fastest sonar-evading underwater missile called the Fajr-3 during a week of war games in the Gulf.
2012 – Hungarian President Pal Schmitt announces his resignation after being stripped of his doctorate for plagiarism.
2015 – Gunmen attack Garissa university in Kenya, killing nearly 150 people.
(Reuters)
