Following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 21:
1910 – American novelist Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) died. His masterpieces “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” were drawn from his boyhood experiences.
1918 – Baron Manfred von Richthofen, Germany’s top aviator in World War One, was killed in action. Known as “The Red Baron”, he shot down 80 enemy aircraft.
1960 – Brasilia became Brazil’s new capital.
1967 – A military coup in Athens established the regime of the “Greek Colonels”.
1971 – Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, president of Haiti since 1957, died. He ran the country as a dictatorship and created a gangster militia known as the Tontons Macoutes.
1989 – Tens of thousands of students and workers poured into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in defiance of official warnings against anti-government protests.
2002 – Thousands took to the streets to protest against the shock success of the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the French presidential election.
2003 – The American singer Nina Simone died aged 70. Her smoky tones gave voice to the American civil rights movement and her repertoire ranged from gospel to George Gershwin.
2004 – Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was freed after 18 years in an Israeli jail, saying he was proud to have revealed secrets exposing the Jewish state as an atomic power.
2006 – Nepal’s King Gyanendra agreed to restore political power to the people, a year after sacking the government.
2016 – Musician Prince dies.
(Reuters)
