On This Day - Back in time on 7 April



In 1498, Charles VIII King of France (1483-98), dies at 27.


In 1506, St Francis Xavier, Jesuit missionary to India, Malaya and Japan, is born.


In 1652, the Dutch establish settlement at Cape Town, South Africa.


In 1770, William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic school of poetry and poet laureate, is born near England's Lake District.


In 1860, American industrialist and philanthropist W K Kellogg is born in Battle Creek, Michigan.


In 1891, American showman Phineas Taylor Barnum dies in Bridgeport, Connecticut. age 81.


In 1908, conductor Percy Faith (Summer Place) is born in Toronto, Ontario.


In 1920, sitar player Ravi Shankar is born in Benares India.


In 1927, the first simultaneous telecast of image and sound takes place. Herbert Hoover read a speech in Washington, DC which was transmitted to Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City, where an audience saw and heard a tiny televised image of Hoover, less than 3 inches square.


In 1939, film maker Francis Ford Coppola is born in Detroit Michigan.


In 1953, by a vote of 57 to 1, Dag Hammarskjýld is elected secretary-general of the United Nations.


In 1954, Jackie Chan, one of the most recognised names in Kung Fu and action movies worldwide, is born in Hong Kong.


In 1957, the last of New York's electric trolleys completes its final run.


In 1963, a new Yugoslav constitution proclaims Tito the president for life of the newly named Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.


In 1968, motor racing world champion Jim Clark is killed in a car crash during a Formula Two race at Hockenheim. He was 32.


In 1978, US President Jimmy Carter defers production of the neutron bomb.


In 1986, home computing pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair sells rights to his machines to Amstrad in a £5m deal.


In 1990, in a tragic coincidence, two separate ferry accidents in different areas of the world take the lives of a reported 325 people. The first takes place in Myanmar (formerly Burma) on the Gyaing River. Later in the day, Scandinavia is also rocked by tragedy.