ON THIS DAY APRIL 4
1841 William Henry Harrison becomes the first US president to die in office (of typhoid fever), and sets the record for the briefest administration (31 days).
1875 Karl Mauch (37), the first person to discover gold in SA, dies in poverty in Stuttgart, Germany. His discoveries included the Witwatersrand and Lydenburg gold reefs. 1889 Henry Allen Fagan, chief justice (195759), cabinet minister and playwright, is born in Tulbagh. A significant figure in the rise of Afrikaner nationalism, he nonetheless became an important opponent of Apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd’s National Party.
1905 An earthquake hits India’s Kangra Valley, killing 20 000 people.
1944 An Anglo-American bombardment of Bucharest oil refineries kills 5 000 civilians. 1949 Twelve nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty, creating Nato.
1964 The Beatles occupy the top five positions on the Billboard Hot 100, with Can’t Buy Me Love (1), Twist and Shout (2), She Loves You (3), I Want to Hold Your Hand (4), and Please Please Me (5).
1968 US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated n Memphis, Tennessee. 1975 Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
1999 Jack Ma founds Alibaba.
2002 The Angolan government and Unita rebels end the Angolan Civil War.
2009 France returns to Nato after years on the sidelines because President Charles de Gaulle had withdrawn in protest at the “special relationship” between the US and the UK. In 1966, all non-French Nato troops were “asked” to leave France; US Secretary of State Dean Rusk asked if that included “bodies of American soldiers in France’s cemeteries?” 2013 A giant tarantula with a 20cm leg span, is discovered in Sri Lanka
2017 Chinese online store Alibaba becomes the world’s largest retailer.
2022 Elon Musk buys 9.2% of Twitter stock, making him the company’s largest shareholder. He goes on to buy it all and X becomes the name of the social media giant. 2023 Finland becomes Nato’s 31st member, doubling Nato’s border with Russia. | The Historian