Apr 14 in History

193AD — Septimius Severus, a native son of Leptis Magna (now Al-Khums, Libya), becomes emperor of Rome three days after his 48th birthday. Under his rule — until his death on February 4 211AD in Eboracum, Britannia, (now York, England) during his campaign to conquer Caledonia — the empire reaches its greatest extent of more than 5-million square kilometres.

1611 — The word “telescope” is invented by Greek theologian, mathematician and chemist Giovanni Demisiani at a banquet held by Italian scientist Prince Federico Cesi to make Galileo Galilei a member of the Accademia dei Lincei (founded by Cesi in 1603). Galileo’s instrument thus becomes the first to be called “telescope” (derived from the Greek tele = far and skopein = to look or see; teleskopos = far-seeing). 1775 — The first US society for the abolition of slavery, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, is founded in Philadelphia. Seventeen of the 24 men at the meeting (called by France-born Anthony Benezet) are Quakers.

1886 — Maggie Laubser, award-winning painter, is born on the far mB loub lo mmetjiesk lo of in the Malmesbury district, Cape Colony.

1887 — The start of “The Adventure of the Reigate Squire”, a Sherlock Holmes short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (published in The Strand Magazine in June 1893 and in 1894 as “Adventure 6: The Reigate Puzzle" in “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes”).

1927 — Swedish automaker Volvo is officially founded when their first car, the Volvo ÖV 4, rolls off the assembly line at the factory in Gothenburg.

1931 — The (Second) Spanish Republic is proclaimed with Niceto Alcalá-Zamora y Torres as prime minister (he becomes president on December 10). King Alfonso XIII goes into exile.

1935 — Black Sunday: A mountain of dust sweeps across the High Plains of the US and turns a warm, sunny afternoon into “a horrible blackness darker than the darkest night”. The worst conditions hit the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. Farmers had ploughed up millions of acres of natural grassland on the Plains since 1914. Drought set in in the summer of 1931. The dust storms (known as the Dust Bowl) between 1930 and ’36 compounded the hardships of people already dealing with the Great Depression. It finally leads to the Soil Conservation Act on April 27 1935. The drought is broken by the 1939 autumn rains. 1939 — John Steinbeck’s novel “The Grapes of Wrath” (set during the Great Depression) is published. 1941 — Julie Christie, actress, is born in Assam, India. She achieves stardom in 1965 with “Darling”, for which she wins the Oscar and earns $7,500, and “Doctor Zhivago”, the eighth highest-grossing film of all time, for which she earns $120,000.