This Day in History - April 6th

1896: Olympiad reborn

On 6 April 1896, the Olympic Games, a long-lost tradition of ancient Greece, are reborn in Athens some 1,400 years after being banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I. The architect of the Olympic revival was a Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who went on to serve as president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) until 1925. At Athens in 1896, the modern reincarnation of the ancient pageant of athleticism involved 13 nations, 280 men, but no women. Ten sports were represented in 42 events, and it was fitting that a Greek, Spyridon Louis, won the marathon, an event that dates back to 776 B.C. In 1924, the year before Pierre de Coubertin's retirement as IOC president, the first truly successful Olympic Games were held in Paris, involving over 3,000 athletes, including more than 100 women, from 44 nations. At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, more than 10,000 athletes from 200 countries competed, including nearly 4,000 women.

Also On This Day

2004

Rolandas Paksas, the President of Lithuania, is impeached.

1997

NASA recalls the space shuttle Colombia to Earth as it has a defective fuel cell.

1994

Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarinana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira are killed in a rocket attack on their plane.

1989

The British government announces plans to end the National Dock Labour Scheme, which had effectively given dockers “a job for life.”

1975

In Britain, a plane carrying 99 Vietnamese orphans sponsored by the Daily Mail newspaper, lands at Heathrow Airport, London.

1973

In America, NASA launches Pioneer 11 to investigate Jupiter and the outer solar system and the planet Saturn and its main rings.

1968

In the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., race riots break out across America’s cities.

1941

The Second World War: Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece.

1930

Mahatma Gandhi reaches Dandi in Gujarat, having set out on 12th March from Sabarmati Ashram, on what was a protest march against the British salt tax in India.

1917

The United States of America declares war on Germany and enters the First World War.

1909

American explorer Robert Peary reaches what he believes to be the North Pole. Decades later evidence emerges which suggests Peary was in fact a few miles short.

1895

In England, Oscar Wilde is arrested from the crime of homosexuality after losing a libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry.

1830

Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints is founded by Joseph Smith-Fayette in New York. The followers are known as Mormons.

1814

Napoleon I abdicates his role as Emperor.

1320

The Declaration of Arbroath is signed, an affirmation of Scottish independence.