On this day

APRIL 8

1730 – Shearith Israel, the first synagogue in New York City, is dedicated.

1820 – The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.

1904 – The French Third Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland sign the Entente cordiale.

1906 – Auguste Deter, the first person to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, dies.

1908 – Harvard University votes to establish the Harvard Business School.

1911 – Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers superconductivity.

1913 – The 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution, requiring direct election of Senators, becomes law.

1924 – Sharia courts are abolished in Turkey, as part of Atatürk’s Reforms.

1942 – World War II: Siege of Leningrad – Soviet forces open a much-needed railway link to Leningrad.

1942 – World War II: The Japanese take Bataan in the Philippines.

1943 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an attempt to check inflation, freezes wages and prices, prohibits workers from changing jobs unless the war effort would be aided thereby, and bars rate increases by common carriers and public utilities.

1945 – World War II: After an air raid accidentally destroys a train carrying about 4,000 Nazi concentration camp internees in Prussian Hanover, the survivors are massacred by Nazis.

1946 – Électricité de France, the world’s largest utility company, is formed as a result of the nationalisation of a number of electricity producers, transporters and distributors.

1950 – India and Pakistan sign the Liaquat-Nehru Pact.

1952 – U.S. President Harry Truman calls for the seizure of all domestic steel mills to prevent a nationwide strike.

1953 – Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta is convicted by Kenya’s British rulers.

1954 – A Royal Canadian Air Force Canadair Harvard collided with a TransCanada Airlines Canadair North Star over Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, killing 37 people.