What Happened On This Day – 4 May
· 1994 Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat sign a peace accord to ensure Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and Jericho
Together with Shimon Peres, the two leaders
received the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. A year later, Rabin was assassinated by a
Jewish extremist.
· 1959 The Grammy is presented for the first time
It is one of the most prestigious awards in the
music industry. Winners of the first edition included Ella Fitzgerald, Henry
Mancini, and Frank Sinatra.
· 1953 Ernest Hemingway wins the Pulitzer Prize
The American author was awarded the prestigious
accolade for his novel The Old Man and the Sea. The story about a fisherman and
his battle with a large marlin also earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature.
· 1904 The United States takes over the construction of the Panama Canal
French engineers had begun digging a waterway
between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in
1881, but they had to abandon the project after about 22,000 lives had been
lost to accidents and disease.
· 1675 King Charles II of England commissions the Royal Observatory in Greenwich
The observatory was built on the prime meridian.
The mean solar time at this location is the basis for Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
Births On This Day – 4 May
· 1989 Rory McIlroy
Irish golfer
· 1929 Audrey Hepburn
Belgian/English actress, singer
· 1928 Hosni Mubarak
Egyptian air marshal, politician, 4th President of
Egypt
· 1916 Jane Jacobs
American/Canadian journalist, author, activist
· 1825 Thomas Henry Huxley
English biologist
Deaths On This Day – 4 May
· 2014 Elena Baltacha
Ukrainian/Scottish tennis player
· 1980 Josip Broz Tito
Yugoslav marshal, politician, 1st President of
Yugoslavia
· 1924 E. Nesbit
English author
· 1903 Gotse Delchev
Bulgarian activist
· 1799 Tipu Sultan
Indian army officer, king
