On this day: NATO founded | Tibet | Battle of Somme

Events, anniversaries and birthdays for April 4.

EVENTS

1618: Cardinal Richelieu was ordered into exile in Avignon for intrigues with France’s Queen Mother Marie de Medici.

1660: King Charles II issued Declaration of Breda, promising religious tolerance.

1896: The discovery of gold in the Yukon led to the “gold rush”. Thousands of prospectors flooded the territory.

1904: Britain and France signed the Entente Cordiale, a mutual recognition of each other’s colonial interests.

1905: An earthquake in Lahore, India, killed 10,000.

1912: Chinese republic was proclaimed in Tibet.

1918: Second Battle of the Somme ended.

1919: Soviet republic was established in Bavaria.

1924: BBC broadcast the first radio programmes for schools.

1933: United States navy helium-filled dirigible Akron fell into Atlantic off New Jersey in storm, with the loss of 73 lives.

1934: The first cat’s eye road studs – the invention of Percy Shaw – were installed near Bradford.

1942: Japanese naval forces sank three British warships in Bay of Bengal.

1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was created by United States, Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Canada.

1958: The first protest march organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament left Hyde Park Corner, London, for Aldermaston.

1969: Doctors in Houston hospital, Texas, implanted first complete artificial heart in 47-year-old man, who died four days later.

1981: Brixton riots erupted between young blacks and police in south London. Arrests totalled 213 and injured 210.

1981: Bob Champion won the Grand National on Aldaniti.

1988: The soap opera Crossroads ended on television, after 4,510 episodes, the first having been shown in December, 1964.

1991: Nine Orkney children taken into care on 27 February amid allegations of child sex abuse, were returned to their families after a ruling by Sheriff David Kelbie in Inverness.

1995: Keith Schellenberg, former owner of Eigg, left the island under police protection after selling it to German artist Marlin Eckhard Maruma.

2007: Fifteen British Royal Navy personnel held in Iran were released by the Iranian president.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1821 Linus Yale, inventor of the cylindrical lock; 1880 Sir William Russell Flint, artist; 1915 Muddy Waters, blues singer; 1922 Elmer Bernstein, film score composer; 1957 Graeme Kelling, rock guitarist (Deacon Blue); 1979 Heath Ledger, actor.

Deaths: 1406 King Robert III of Scotland; 1617 John Napier of Merchiston, Scotland’s greatest mathematician; 1931 André Michelin, tyre manufacturer; 1968 Martin Luther King, American civil rights leader; 1979 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan president.

BIRTHDAYS

David Blaine, magician and endurance artist, 40; Jonathan Agnew, BBC cricket correspondent, 53; Maya Angelou, singer, actress and civil rights activist, 85; Dave Hill, rock guitarist (Slade), 67: Robert Downey Jr, actor, 48; Sarah Gadon, actress, 26; Benny Green, jazz musician, 50; Trevor Griffiths, playwright, 78; David E Kelley, screenwriter (Ally McBeal), 57; Craig T Nelson, actor, 69; Alexa Nikolas, actress, 21; Peter Vaughan, actor, 90.