NOW & THEN
4 APRIL
1618: Cardinal Richelieu was ordered into exile in Avignon for intrigues with France’s Queen Mother Marie de Medici.
1660: King Charles II issued the Declaration of Breda, promising religious tolerance.
1896: The discovery of gold in the Yukon led to the “gold rush”. Thousands of prospectors flooded the territory, creating a colourful period recorded by authors such as Robert W Service and Jack London.
1904: Britain and France signed the Entente Cordiale, a mutual recognition of each other’s colonial interests.
1905: An earthquake in Lahore, India, killed 10,000.
1918: Second Battle of the Somme ended.
1922: Armand Jeannes, the man who betrayed British nurse Edith Cavell, was sentenced to death by a Brussels court. Cavell, who had helped many allied soldiers to escape from German occupied Belgium during the First World War, was executed by a German firing squad on 12 October, 1915.
1924: BBC broadcast the first radio programmes for schools.
1934: The first cat’s eye road studs – invented by Percy Shaw – were installed near Bradford.
1942: Japanese naval forces sank three British warships in Bay of Bengal.
1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was created by the United States, Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Canada.
1958: The first protest march by Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament left Hyde Park Corner, London, for Aldermaston.
1959: Ivory Coast signed a series of agreements with Niger, Upper Volta and Dahomey to form the Sahel-benin Union.
1964: Archbishop Makarios abrogated 1960 treaty among Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, and heavy fighting erupted in northwest Cyprus.
1969: Doctors in Houston hospital, Texas, implanted the first complete artificial heart in a 47-year-old man, who died four days later.
1981: Bob Champion won the Grand National on Aldaniti.
1986: Israel formally asked for access to the UN War Crimes Commission file on former Secretary-general Kurt Waldheim.
1988: Iran hammered Iraq’s oil centres with missiles and fighter-bombers.
1988: The soap opera Crossroads ended on television, after 4,510 episodes, the first having been shown in December, 1964.
1991: Nine Orkney children taken into care on 27 February amid allegations of child sex abuse were returned to their families after a ruling by Sheriff David Kelbie in Inverness.
1995: Keith Schellenberg, former owner of Eigg, left the island under police protection after selling it to German artist Marlin Eckhard Maruma.
2002: The Angolan government and Unita rebels signed a peace treaty ending the Angolan Civil War.
2007: Fifteen British Royal Navy personnel held in Iran were released by the Iranian president.
2013: More than 70 people were killed when a building collapsed in Thane, India.
BIRTHDAYS
Jonathan Agnew MBE, BBC cricket correspondent, 62; David Blaine, American magician and endurance artist, 49; Robert Downey Jr, American actor (The Avengers, Iron Man), 57; Sarah Gadon, Canadian actress, 35; Benny Green, American jazz pianist, 59; Trevor Griffiths, British playwright, 87; Daniel Stendel, football manager, 48; Dave Hill, British rock guitarist (Slade), 76; David E Kelley, American screenwriter, 66; Craig T Nelson, American actor (Poltergeist), 78; Alexa Nikolas, American actress (Mad Men The Walking Dead), 30; Graham Norton, TV and radio presenter and author, 59
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1922 Elmer Bernstein, film score composer; 1923 Peter Vaughan, British actor; 1928 Jimmy Logan, Scottish entertainer; 1928 Maya Angelou, author, civil rights activist; 1941 Bill Tarmey, British actor); 1952 Gary Moore, rock guitarist; 1979 Heath Ledger, actor.
Deaths: 1968 Martin Luther King, US civil rights leader; 1983 Gloria Swanson, actress; 1995 Kenny Everett, DJ and comic; 2014 Margo Macdonald, MSP, MP 1973-74; 2016 Guy Woolfenden OBE, composer; 2018 Ray Wilkins MBE, English footballer.