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SCMP Reporter

In Hong Kong

1959: Italian actress Rossana Podesta, star of Helen Of Troy, was in the colony to publicise an Italian film festival.

1962: Ancient rock inscriptions estimated to date back between 3,500 and 4,000 years, were discovered on Lantau Island. A government spokesman said the inscriptions were pre-Chinese and attempts were being made to decipher them and determine their origin.

1966: The Kowloon Motor Bus Company reported 56 of its buses had been damaged in two nights of rioting over a proposed increase in Star Ferry fares.

Around the world

1689: William III of Orange and his wife Mary II were crowned joint monarchs of Great Britain.

1814: Napoleon abdicated and was banished to the Isle of Elba under the Treaty of Fontainebleau; Louis XVIII acceded to the throne.

1913: French pilot Gustave Hamel made a record return trip across the Channel from Dunkirk to Dover and back in only 90 minutes.

1919: The constitution of the International Labour Organisation took effect.

1939: Germany pressured Hungary to withdraw from the League of Nations.

1945: American troops captured the German towns of Essen and Weimar and liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp.

1951: US President Harry S Truman dismissed General Douglas MacArthur from all posts including United Nations Forces Commander in Korea for making critical political statements.

1951: The Stone of Scone, symbol of Scottish nationhood, was recovered 107 days after it was stolen from Westminster Abbey by Scottish Nationalists.

1957: Singapore was granted self-government by Britain.

1970: The US spacecraft Apollo 13 was launched on its ill-fated journey to the moon. Forced to turn back due to an on-board explosion, it landed safely on April 17.

1979: The Ugandan capital Kampala fell to a combined force of Ugandan exiles and Tanzanian troops, ending the eight-year rule of Idi Amin who fled to Libya.

1984: Zoe, the first baby to emanate from a frozen embryo, was born in Melbourne.

1994: Communists and their allies out-polled nationalist rivals in Ukraine's first post-Soviet general election, filling nearly a quarter of the seats.

1996: Forty-three African states signed a treaty declaring Africa free of nuclear weapons at a ceremony marred by Russian reservations about the document.

2000: British historian David Irving lost a libel action against an American professor and her publishers who accused him of being a 'Holocaust denier'.

2000: Disgraced South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje admitted taking money from an Indian bookmaker in the worst scandal in the sport's history.

2000: Andre Deutsch, Hungarian-born publisher who launched many post-war American writers, died. He was 82.



Today in history