This Week In History
APRIL 3
1930 – The second Academy Awards are held at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and are the first to be broadcast on the radio. The Broadway Melody wins best picture.
1968 – The movie Planet Of The Apes (above), starring Charlton Heston (above left) and Roddy McDowall, premieres in the United States.
2010 – Matt Smith appears for the first time as the 11th Doctor in Doctor Who on the BBC in the episode called The Eleventh Hour.
2016 – New Zealand’s Lydia Ko wins the ANA Inspiration at Mission Hills to claim her second major golf title.
APRIL 4
1968 – US civil rights activist Martin Luther King is assassinated by James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.
1973 – The World Trade Centre, then the world’s tallest building, opens in New York. It was later destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
1975 – British sitcom The Good Life, starring Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal, Paul Eddington and Penelope Keith, debuts on BBC One.
1995 – British TV personality Kenny Everett dies, aged 50, of an Aids-related illness.
2008 – Singer and actress Beyonce Knowles, 30, and rapper Jay-Z, 43, are married at a penthouse apartment in New York.
APRIL 5
1987 – TV sitcom Married... With Children (below) and The Tracey Ullman Show premiere on the Fox TV network.
1994 – US grunge rocker Kurt Cobain of Nirvana commits suicide. He was 27.
1997 – Steve Irwin’s series The Crocodile Hunter debuts on TV.
2008 – US actor Charlton Heston dies, aged 84, of pneumonia.
2020 – Queen Elizabeth II makes a rare public address (“We will meet again”) about the Covid-19 pandemic. On the same day British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is admitted to hospital suffering from Covid-19.
APRIL 6
1896 – The first modern Summer Olympics open in Athens, Greece. US athlete James Connolly becomes the
first modern Olympic champion when he wins the triple jump.
1974 – Swedish band Abba (above), singing Waterloo, win the 19th Eurovision Song Contest, in Brighton.
2006 – Sign language is made an official language of New Zealand.
2009 – The Star Trek film reboot, directed by JJ Abrams and starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, premieres in Austin, Texas.
2012 – Model Heidi Klum, 39, and musician Seal, 49, are divorced after almost seven years of marriage.
APRIL 7
1947 – American industrialist and vehicle pioneer Henry Ford dies, aged 83, of a cerebral haemorrhage.
1963 – US golfer Jack Nicklaus, aged 23, wins the US Masters for the first time. He would go on to win a record six green jackets.
1977 – United States businessman Donald Trump, 30, weds his first wife Czech model Ivana Zelnickova, 28, at the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, New York.
2000 – South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje is charged by Delhi police with fixing one-day international matches against India.
APRIL 8
1973 – Spanish painter Pablo Picasso dies, aged 91, of heart failure.
1986 – US actor Clint Eastwood is elected as mayor of Carmel, California.
1990 – The drama series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and starring Kyle MacLachlan (above), premieres on ABC TV.
2013 – Margaret Thatcher, who was British Prime Minister from 1979-1990, dies of a stroke. She was 87.
APRIL 9
1986 – The US soap Dallas announces it will revive the character of Bobby Ewing, who had been killed off.
2002 – More than a million people line the streets of London for the funeral of the Queen Mother at Westminster Abbey.
2005 – Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles are married at Windsor Guildhall.
2012 – The Lion King becomes the highest-grossing Broadway show after overtaking The Phantom Of The Opera.
2017 – New Zealand comedian John Clarke (below), who created the character Fred Dagg, dies of a heart attack while on a bush walk in Australia’s Grampian National Park. He was 68.