ON THIS DAY APRIL 8

1783 Catherine II of Russia annexes the Crimea from the Ottoman Empire.

1820 The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Milos. One of the star attractions, along with the Mona Lisa, of the Louvre Museum in Paris. The statue, most often held to be a depiction of Aphrodite, the ancient goddess of love, is famous for its missing arms in addition to its beauty.

1879 Milk is sold in glass bottles for the first time.

1906 Auguste Deter, a German woman and the first person to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, dies.

1940 German battlecruisers sink the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious.

1943 Otto and Elise Hampel are guillotined in Berlin, Germany, for their anti-Nazi activities. Their crime: they wrote postcards denouncing Hitler’s government and left them in public places.

1941 After an air raid accidentally destroys a train carrying about 4 000 Nazi concentration camp inmates in Prussian Hanover, the Nazis massacre the survivors.

1953 Mau Mau rebellion leader Jomo Kenyatta is convicted by British Kenya’s rulers. He later became the country’s prime minister, then its president.

1954 An SAA passenger plane, G-ALYY, on a flight to Johannesburg disintegrates at altitude in the night sky in the Mediterranean Sea between Naples and Stromboli, killing all 21 people onboard. It leads to another grounding of the ill-fated De Havilland Comets across the globe.

1961 An anti-tank mine, believed to have been placed by an Omani rebel group, explodes on the British liner Dara in the Persian Gulf. Of the 819 people aboard, 238 are killed. The ship sinks two days later.

1986 Clint Eastwood is elected mayor of Carmel, California. It makes his day.

1991 An amount of R1.3 million is paid in compensation to 32 South African seamen who lost their fingers as a result of frostbite incurred when they were forced to work without adequate protective clothing on Taiwanese fishing trawlers.

1998 The Trans-Kalahari main road, the first road south of the Sahara to connect the Atlantic and Indian Ocean, is opened.

2006 The bodies of eight men, all shot to death, are found in a field in Ontario, Canada. The murders are soon linked to the Bandidos Motorcycle Club.