#TodayInHistory – April 6

April 6 – Some importante events on this day

46 BC 👉🏼 Julius Caesar defeats Caecilius Metellus Scipio and Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Younger) in the battle of Thapsus.

1652 👉🏼 Cape Colony, the 1st European settlement in South Africa, on the Cape of Good Hope, established by Dutch East India Company under Jan van Riebeeck. His arrival depicted here in a painting by Charles Bell (1813-1882).
In the beginning the Cape Colony was established as a re-supply point for the company’s trade between the east and the Netherlands. In the years that followed a colony was established and the Dutch began to farm the surrounding area.
The Cape was already the territory of two local semi-nomadic peoples, the Khoikhoi and the San, but their rights to the land were denied and over time their traditional lifestyle was decimated by disease and conflict with the new settlers.

1722 👉🏼 Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, ends tax on men with beards
1886 👉🏼 City of Vancouver BC incorporated

1889 👉🏼 George Eastman begins selling his Kodak flexible rolled film for the first time.
He founded the Eastman Kodak Company and popularized the use of roll film, which helped bring photography to the mainstream.
He was also a major philanthropist, establishing the Eastman School of Music, and schools of dentistry and medicine in London and at the University of Rochester.

1909 👉🏼 North Pole reached by Americans Robert Peary & Matthew Henson
1917 👉🏼 US declares war on Germany, enters World War I
1991 👉🏼 Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona suspended for 15 month by Italian League for testing positive for cocaine use

1994 👉🏼 Rwandan Genocide begins with the assassination of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira with their plane being shot down by surface-to-air missiles, abruptly ending peace negotiations. Those responsible have never been identified.
Habyarimana was the dictatorial President of Rwanda from 1973 until his assassination on this day. His death sparked the mobilization of anti-Tutsi militias across Rwanda, leading to the 100-day Rwandan Genocide, in which some 800,000 people were killed.

2016 👉🏼 First baby born with DNA from 3 parents through mitochondrial transfer in Mexico