June 4: On this day in world history …. briefly

1789:     The Dauphin Louis, son of Louis XVI and heir to the French throne dies at age seven.

1798:     In Bohemia, one of the century’s most flamboyant characters, Giovanni Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt. Casanova was born in 1725 in Venice, the son of an actor. His expulsion from the Seminary of St Cyprian for ‘scandalous conduct’ launched him on a varied and infamous career in which he was writer, traveller, adventurer, soldier, spy, diplomat and dedicated ‘ladies’ man’. One of the more daring exploits of this man of many parts was his escape – under the nose of the Doge himself – from Venice’s Piombi prison where he was serving a five-year sentence after being denounced as a magician. Among his writings are Icosameron, a futuristic adventure fantasy, and his fascinating memoirs Histoire de Ma Vie.

1805:     The first ceremony of the Trooping of the Colour is held in Horse Guards Parade, London.

1831:     Prince Leopold of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, becomes the first king of Belgium, although King William III of The Netherlands refuses to acknowledge Belgian independence.

1844:     Scientists were excited by the discovery of a great auk in Iceland. The large flightless bird, also known as the garefowl, was thought to be totally extinct.

1926:     Death of Frederick Spofforth, the Australian cricketer known as the demon bowler.

1937:     The first supermarket trolley bowls along the aisles of a supermarket in Oklahoma.

1940:     As the might of the German army sweeps northwards through France, a massive Allied military operation was taking place in the coastal town of Dunkirk, northern France. In the small hours of the morning, under fire from German guns, a flotilla of naval and civilian craft completed the safe evacuation of some 335 000, out of a total of 400 000 Allied troops. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill hailed the operation as ‘a miracle of deliverance’, but admitted that in military terms it was a massive defeat for the Allies.

1946:     Juan Perón is elected president of Argentina.

1959:     Charles de Gaulle stuns French colonists in Algeria by telling them they must integrate with the Muslim Algerians if they wish to stay.

1973:     A Russian supersonic airline built on the lines of Concorde explodes at the Paris Air Show, killing six crew members and 27 onlookers.

1988:     Death of Sir Douglas Nicholls, governor of South Australia, the first Aborigine to govern a state and to receive a knighthood.

1989:     Over 460 people died in a massive gas explosion that wrecked two crowded passenger trains about 740 miles (1 190km) east of Moscow. The accident occurred as the two trains, travelling on the Trans-Siberian railway, passed each other. It seems to have been caused by sparks from the line that ignited gas leaking from the huge long-distance pipeline that runs alongside the track. All that remained of the trains were the wrecked and blackened shells of the carriages lying overturned at the side of the line. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited the scene of the accident.

1989:     Up to 2 600 people were killed and 10 000 injured as soldiers opened fire on student demonstrators in Tienanmen Square in Beijing. Since the removal of moderate party chairman Hu Yaobang in 1987, the conflict between the moderates and old-style Maoist hardliners escalated to crisis point. In a massive demonstration for greater democracy, huge crowds of student protesters had barricaded themselves into Tienanmen Square. In a show of force, the government had ordered the army into action. Reaching the square from the Avenue of Eternal Peace, troops showered students with a hail of bullets and their armoured vehicles crashed through the barricades. The square and surrounding city became a scene of horror and chaos. Emergency services could not get through.

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