Under Wednesday, April 5, the book of history records, among other things:
1818: The Spaniards are defeated on the Río Maipo by General José de San Martin, who thus wins Chile’s independence. End of Spanish colonial rule.
1918: Japanese troops occupy Vladivostok, a little later the English also land.
1933: In Berlin, the Hitler Youth occupies the office of the Reich Committee of German Youth Associations. NSDAP “Reichsjugendfuhrer” Baldur von Schirach took over the leadership.
1938: The Viennese Archbishop Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, who was quoted in the Vatican, has to plead before Pope Pius XI. on suspicion of collaboration with the Nazis. In a declaration on the “Anschluss”, which Innitzer personally signed with “Heil Hitler”, Austria’s bishops had called on the faithful to “confess themselves with the German Reich”.
1958: The Cuban insurgents led by Fidel Castro begin “total war” against the regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista.
1958: The second television station of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation is put into operation on Vienna’s Kahlenberg.
1963: The Soviet Union agrees to the establishment of a “hot line” between Washington and Moscow.
1988: On the way from Bangkok to Kuwait, a Kuwait Airways Boeing 747 is hijacked and forced to land in Mesched. The kidnappers, who are linked to the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, are demanding the release of Kuwaiti like-minded people who are being held. On April 8, two passengers were shot dead at the airport in the Cypriot city of Larnaca. On April 20, the kidnappers in Algiers gave up, released the hostages and received safe conduct.
1993: After the election debacle of the French Socialists, party leader Laurent Fabius is overthrown and a provisional governing body is formed under ex-Prime Minister Michel Rocard.
1998: The judoka Thomas Schleicher was arrested for dealing in cocaine. The Vice European Champion stationed in Salzburg is said to have been dealing for four years. Schleicher was expelled from the army and sentenced in early September.
1998: In Japan, the longest suspension bridge in the world, the nearly four-kilometer-long Kobe Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge with a span of 1,991 meters from pillar to pillar, opens to traffic.
2003: US units advance into the city center of Baghdad and take the headquarters of the Medina division of the elite troops of the “Republican Guard” without any resistance worth mentioning.
2008: Actor Charlton Heston dies at his home in Beverly Hills at the age of 84. The actor of characters like Moses, Judah, Michelangelo or El Cid received an Oscar for best leading actor in “Ben Hur” in 1959 and was active as a gun lobbyist alongside his Hollywood career.
birthdays: Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher (1588-1679); Bette Davis, US actress (1908-1989); Herbert von Karajan, East. conductor (1908-1989); Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran, French Catholic Vatican theologian and diplomat (1943-2018); Franziska van Almsick, German swimmer (1978); Laura Feiersinger, Austria Soccer Player (1993).
days of death: Juliana of Liège, Belgian Catholic nun and mystic (c. 1198-1258); Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Austria. Baroque master builder (1656-1723); Herbert Graf, Austria opera director/director (1903-1973); Charlton Heston, US actor (1923-2008); Cecil Taylor, US jazz pianist (1929-2018); Isao Takahata, Japan. animation director and producer (1935-2018); Herbert Breiteneder, Austria Rally driver (1953-2008).
name days: Vinzenz, Juliana, Kreszentia, Theodora, Albrecht, Agathe, Senta, Eva, Gerhard, Katharina.