April 20: On this day in world history …. briefly

1770:     Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook discovers Terra Australis at the age of 40. After observing the transit of the planet Venus from Tahiti, the Yorkshireman struck out south and south-west in an attempt to find the southern continent, the so-called Terra Australis. Instead he reports finding a group of islands called New Zealand which he charted over six months. He then travelled north along the south-east coast surveying Australia.

1653:     Oliver Cromwell dissolves the Long Parliament which governed England during the Civil War.

1768:     Death of Canaletto, Venetian artist who specialised in painting views.

1857:     West African Muslim leader Al Hajj Uman lays siege to the French fort of Medine in Senegal.

1883:     Edouard Manet, one of the first impressionist painters, dies in terrible pain a week after having a gangrenous leg amputated.

1887:     The first motor race occurs, with only one entrant.

1912:     Dublin-born writer Bram (Abraham) Stoker died at his home in London at the age of 65. Although his only great success as a writer was Count Dracula, he was also a journalist, a student of mathematics and philosophy, an accomplished athlete, a civil servant and the touring manager and secretary of actor Henry Irving.

1913:     The two children of dancer Isadora Duncan are drowned when the car in which they were travelling rolls downhill into the Seine.

1929:     King Victor III of Italy opens a parliament composed entirely of Fascists under the leadership of Benito Mussolini.

1944:     The RAF drops a record 4 500 tons of bombs on Germany in a single raid.

1992:     British comedian Benny Hill dies.

1999:     Disaffected students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School in Colorado shoot 13 fellow students.

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