ON THIS DAY, APRIL 14

1653 Jan van Riebeeck writes to his bosses asking for a salary increase and complains that he has not been promoted to India.

1865 US President Abraham Lincoln is shot and mortally wounded while watching a play.

1881 The Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight is fought in El Paso where Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire accounts for three of the four fatalities with his twin .44 calibre Smith & Wesson revolvers. Three Texas Rangers nearby did not take part, saying they felt Stoudenmire had the situation well in hand.

1900 The first Boer prisoners of war arrive at their new home, on the island of St Helena.

1906 The Natal government offers a £500 bounty for the capture of Bambata.

1912 The RMS Titanic hits an iceberg.

1935 Black Sunday: A severe US Midwest sandstorm creates the ’Dust Bowl’.

1942 The island of Malta receives the George Cross for gallantry. The cross is now an emblem on the Maltese national flag.

1986 The heaviest hailstones ever recorded (1kg) fall in Bangladesh, killing 92 people.

1986 US warplanes bomb Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation for the bombing of a discotheque in West Berlin. Among the air raid’s victims was the infant daughter of Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s head of state.

1986 Desmond Tutu is elected Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town.

2003 US troops capture Abu Abbas, leader of the hijackers of the Achille Lauro.

2010 Nearly 2 700 people are killed by an earthquake in Tibet.

2010 A volcano begins erupting in Iceland, affecting 10 million airline passengers.

2013 Some 33 people are killed when a bus tumbles off a cliff in Trujillo, Peru.

2014 In Chibok, Nigeria, 276 schoolgirls are abducted by Boko Haram.

2015 Archeologists say they have found in Kenya 3.3 million-year old stone tools, which pre-date the earliest humans.

2017 A rubbish dump collapses onto houses in Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 26 people.

2019 Seychelles President Danny Faure makes first-ever live speech from a submersible pleading for better marine protection.