1912 – A British passenger line RMS Titanic sinks into the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg. Only 710 of the 2222 passengers and crew on board survive. The Titanic RMS, until that period, was presented as the maritime pride of Great Britain. The catastrophic drowning of the Titanic trans-ocean is considered one of the greatest tragedies known to mankind in peacetime.
1938 – Claudia Cardinale is born in Tunis. Cardinale is an Italian film actress who starred in some of the most acclaimed European films of the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in Italian or French, but also in many English-language films. She was considered the sex symbol of world cinema. Some of her films are Goha, The Leopard, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Hell and Heroes, and more.
1945 – The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated by British troops. Originally this was an “exchange camp”, where Jewish hostages were held with the intention of exchanging them for German prisoners of war held abroad. The camp was later expanded to accommodate Jews from other camps. More than 50,000 internees of various nationalities died in the camp, including Anne Frank.
1946 – Faik Shatku, lawyer, minister and Albanian representative of the prefecture of Dibra in the National Assembly during the 1937-’39 legislature, dies in Tirana. On 01.06.1938 with the changes that were made in the government of the Prime Minister Koço Kotta, Faik Shatku was mandated as Minister of Justice, a position which he held until 07.04.1939. During this period he initiated the reform for the criminalization of some criminal offenses, repealed some archaic laws as well as reformatted the criminal and civil procedural legislation. With the invasion of Albania, on April 7, 1939, he left fascist Italy together with King Zog I and the accompanying suite for Turkey. In March 1940 he returned to his homeland, but was interned in Italy, without any motivation. He was first held in Bari prison and then in Bergamo. In May 1941 he was released from prison and returned home. Upon his return, he is appointed chairman of the audit commission at the Ministry of Finance. He passed away on April 15, 1946 in Tirana.
1969 – North Korea destroys a United States Navy aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 crew members on board. The Lockheed EC-121M aircraft crashed 90 nautical miles (167 km) off the coast of North Korea and all 31 Americans (30 sailors and 1 sailor) on board were killed. This tragedy is the only major loss of U.S. air during the Cold War era.
1986 – United States launches Operation El Dorado Canyon, a military airstrike operation that targets Libyan targets. El Dorado Canyon was carried out in response to the blowing up of a disco in West Germany that killed two American soldiers. During these bombings, the residence of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, accused of financing terrorists, was also heavily attacked.
1989 – A human repression occurs at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield Wednesday F.C. in the FA Cup semi-finals, resulting in the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans. Confrontations between rival fans, respectively of both teams, would lead to a human collapse where Liverpool fans, in an attempt to get out of this situation, were pushed with each other. This would be one of the most serious tragedies of English football.
1990 – Greta Garbo, 85, dies. Garbo, was a Swedish-American film actress during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo in fifth place on its list of the biggest stars of classic Hollywood cinema. For most of her career she was known for her melancholy and miserable personality due to her portraits of many tragic characters in her films.
1994 – The Marrakesh Agreement on the Establishment of the World Trade Organization is adopted. The Marrakesh Agreement, manifested by the Marrakesh Declaration, was signed, in Morocco, by 123 nations. This marked the end of bilateral talks in the 8-year-old Uruguay Round and the creation of the World Trade Organization, which officially entered the fray on January 1, 1995.
