What Happened on April 6
Significant Events
- 46 BC Julius Caesar defeats Caecilius Metellus Scipio and Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Younger) in the battle of Thapsus.
- 1652 Cape Colony, the 1st European settlement in South Africa, established by Dutch East India Company under Jan van Riebeeck
- 1917 US declares war on Germany, enters World War I
- 1994 Rwandan Genocide begins with the assassination of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira with their plane being shot down by surface-to-air missiles, abruptly ending peace negotiations. Those responsible have never been identified.
April 6 in Film & TV
- 1889 George Eastman begins selling his Kodak flexible rolled film for the first time
April 6 in Music
- 1974 19th Eurovision Song Contest: ABBA for Sweden wins singing "Waterloo" in Brighton
April 6 in Sport
- 1896 1st modern Olympic games open in Athens, Greece. America's James Connolly wins 1st Olympic gold in modern history, is awarded a silver medal and an olive branch [3/25 OS]
Famous Birthdays
Raphael
(1483 - 1520)
James Watson
90 Years Old
Billy Dee Williams
81 Years Old
Merle Haggard
(1937 - 2016)
Paul Rudd
49 Years Old
Zach Braff
43 Years Old
Would You Believe?
First baby born with DNA from 3 parents through mitochondrial transfer in Mexico
On April 6, 2016
Famous Weddings
- 1868 Brigham Young marries his 27th & final wife
- 1896 23rd US President Benjamin Harrison (63) weds Mary Scott (37) at St Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church in New York City
- 1920 Physicist Erwin Schrödinger (32) weds Annemarie Bertel
- 1943 US Marine Corps aviator and astronaut John Glenn (21) weds high school sweetheart Anna Margaret Castor
- 1953 MLB baseball player Ernie Banks (22) weds Mollye Louise
Famous Divorces
- 2012 Actress and model Heidi Klum (39) divorces British soul and R&B singer-songwriter Seal (49) due to irreconcilable differences after almost seven years of marriage
Richard the Lionheart
Igor Stravinsky
Chiang Kai-shek
Isaac Asimov
Juvénal Habyarimana
Tammy WynetteApril in History
The Computer That Came By Truck
It didn't have the sleek lines that Steve Jobs would admire and it needed to be carried on a truck, but the computer age had finally arrived in rural England.
April 3, 1957
Lionheart Richard, The Stranger King
Richard the Lionheart, Robin Hood’s king is considered one of the great English monarchs. Yet he cost his country a fortune and barely lived there.
April 6, 1199
The Man Who Sold His Wife
Most modern readers believe Thomas Hardy was plunging into deep fiction when he wrote about a man selling his wife in, The Mayor of Casterbridge. He wasn't.
April 7, 1832
Step Aboard the Titanic – Las Vegas Style
Even by Las Vegas standards it was controversial, a $1.2 billion recreation of the doomed Titanic, along with the iceberg that caused its destruction.
April 8, 1999