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British Army Gazelle helicopter

A British Army helicopter was destroyed in a friendly fire incident during the Falklands War, killing its four occupants. In the early hours of 6 June 1982, the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Cardiff was looking for aircraft supplying the Argentine forces on the Falkland Islands. A Gazelle helicopter (example pictured) of the Army Air Corps was making a delivery to British troops on East Falkland. Cardiff's crew assumed that it was hostile and fired two missiles, destroying it. Although Cardiff was suspected, scientific tests on the wreckage were inconclusive. No formal inquiry was held until four years later. Defending their claim that the helicopter had been lost in action, the Ministry of Defence stated that they did not want to upset relatives until they had ascertained how it had been shot down. A board of inquiry identified factors including a lack of communication between the army and the navy, and the army's decision to turn off helicopters' identification friend or foe transmitters. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Roman baths (Amman)

... that two headless white marble statues found in Amman's Roman baths (pictured) in 2020 were carved from stone quarried in Greece?
... that Holy Cross Church in Kentucky was built on land donated by the namesake of a brand of whiskey?
... that Kanailal Sarkar, the opposition candidate for mayor of Calcutta in 1963, had been jailed during the 1930 protest movement against British rule in India?
... that Canadian football player Pieter Vanden Bos was traded from the Roughriders to the Rough Riders?
... that workers in European lace workshops and schools chanted catchy, often gruesome rhymes?
... that the tenure of Wallis and Futuna's longest-serving senator, Soséfo Makapé Papilio, ended when he was found dead in a car submerged in the sea?
... that velvet worms had an ancient relative with two pairs of antennae?
... that both athletes for American Samoa at the 2024 Summer Olympics represented the territory because their relatives were born there?
... that "the world's ugliest woman" won the women's world gurning title 28 times?

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US president Donald Trumpov announces (pictured) trade tariffs on most countries.
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The Sudan People's Liberation Movement-in-Opposition unilaterally voids the 2018 peace agreement after the arrest of South Sudanese vice president Riek Machar and his wife, interior minister Angelina Teny.

On this day

April 4: Hansik in Korea (2024); Qingming Festival (traditional Chinese, 2025)

Alexios I Komnenos

503 BC – Roman consul Agrippa Menenius Lanatus celebrated a triumph for a military victory over the Sabines.
1081 – The Komnenos dynasty came to full power with the coronation of Alexios I Komnenos (pictured) as Byzantine emperor.
1859 – Bryant's Minstrels premiered the minstrel song "Dixie" in New York City as part of their blackface show.
1949 – Twelve nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty, establishing NATO, an international military alliance whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.

A. Thomas Bradbury (b. 1902)
Martin Rundkvist (b. 1972)
Xu Lai (d. 1973)
Inez Robb (d. 1979)

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Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University

In 1920, the University of Oxford admitted women to degrees for the first time during the Michaelmas term. The conferrals took place at the Sheldonian Theatre on 14 October, 26 October, 29 October, 30 October and 13 November. That same year, on 7 October, women also became eligible for admission as full members of the university. Before 1920, it is estimated that around 4,000 women studied at Oxford since the opening of the university's first women's colleges in 1879. One graduate was Annie Rogers, who took undergraduate exams in 1875 and 1877 and was finally given a degree in 1920, when she was 64 years old. The last survivor of the first conferral ceremony was Constance Savery, who died at the age of 101 in 1999. (Full list...)

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The red panda is a mammal native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China. It has dense reddish-brown fur with a black belly and legs, and a ringed tail. It has a head-to-body length of 51–63.5 cm (20–25 in) and a 28–48.5 cm (11–19 in) tail, and it weighs between 3.2 and 15 kg (7 and 33 lb). It is genetically close to raccoons, weasels and skunks. Solitary, largely arboreal and well adapted to climbing, it inhabits coniferous, temperate broadleaf and mixed forests, favouring steep slopes with dense bamboo cover close to water sources. It uses elongated wrist bones ("false thumbs") to grasp bamboo. It feeds mainly on bamboo shoots and leaves. Red pandas mate in early spring, giving birth to litters of up to four cubs in summer. On the IUCN Red List as endangered since 2015, the species is threatened by poaching and deforestation-based habitat destruction and fragmentation.

Photograph credit: Mathias Appel

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