April 04 : We are all faced with a series of great opportunities - brilliantly disguised as insolvable problems.

On this day, 04 Apr...

1786 - In British Parliament, Berk alleged 11 corruption charges against Indian Governor General Warren Hastings.

1828 - Casparus van Wooden patented chocolate milk powder (Amsterdam).

1899 - A gas burner was patented by Benjamin F. Jackson, a black American inventor (No. 622,482). His design improved the equal distribution of air under pressure to ensure more complete combustion of the fuel gas.

1918 - Battle of Somme ends. (It was one of the largest battles of World War I, in which more than1,000,000 men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The British and French forces were arraigned opposite the Germans).

1926 - Martial law is declared in Calcutta as rioting continues.

1932 - Professor C. Glen King of the University of Pittsburgh isolated vitamin C, a medical and scientific breakthrough, after five years of effort. By painstaking research extracting components from lemon juice - requiring untold thousands of lemons - King and his colleagues isolated a crystalline substance, identified, and later synthesised vitamin C. Their discovery meant prevention of the disease of scurvy, long a source of human suffering.

1951 - West Germany establishes full diplomatic relations with India.

1969 - Dr Denton Cooley implanted the first total artificial heart.

1983 - The space shuttle Challenger roared into orbit on its maiden voyage. It was named after the British Naval research vessel HMS Challenger that sailed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans during the 1870's. Challenger joined the NASA fleet of reusable winged spaceships and flew nine successful Space Shuttle missions. But on 28 Jan 1986, its tenth launch, the Challenger and its crew of seven were lost 73 seconds after launch when a booster failure resulted in the breakup of the vehicle.

1997 - World Bank Atlas for 1997 put India as world's fifth largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity estimated around $1318 trillion.

Born

1904 - Kundan Lal Saigal, golden-voiced singer, legend in his lifetime, actor and film maker. (His memorable hits include "Ek Bangla Bane Nayara", "Diya Jalao" etc).

1932 - Bapu Nadkarni, cricketer (economical Indian slow left-armer, 1956-68).

1944 - The Battle of Kohima, a turning point in the Second World War that halted Japan’s advance into Asia, started on 4 April 1944. Sometimes called the “Stalingrad of the East”, it ended on 22 June 1944 with the defeat and retreat of Japanese forces.

1949 - Parveen Babi, actor.

1955 - Prema Narayan, actor.

1972 - Lisa Ray, model.

RIP

1905 - Earthquake in Kangra kills 20,000.

1929 - Karl Friedrich Benz was a German mechanical engineer who designed and in 1885 built the world's first practical automobile to be powered by an internal-combustion engine.

You may have known...

A UN-sponsored ceasefire came into being on 1 Jan 1949. The United Nations passed a resolution recommending a three-step process for the resolution of the dispute. In the first step, Pakistan was asked to withdraw all its nationals from Kashmir. In the second step, India was asked to progressively reduce its forces to the minimum level required for law and order. In the third step, India was asked to appoint a plebiscite administrator nominated by the United Nations who would conduct a free and impartial plebiscite.