2001 - Two-time Oscar winner Anthony Quinn, a former shoeshine boy and preacher who became an international leading man with a film career spanning six decades, died of respiratory failure. He was 86. Both Quinn’s screen presence and personal style were larger than life. The barrel-chested actor fathered 13 children and starred in 100 feature films, including the fierce Bedouin leader in Lawrence of Arabia in 1962 and the earthy hero of the 1964 film Zorba the Greek. He won his first Oscar for his work in the 1952 film Viva Zapata! as the brother of Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata. He picked up his second award for supporting actor in the stylish 1956 drama Lust for Life. He was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, on April 21, 1915.
Other important events
1875 - Alexander Graham Bell makes first voice transmission.
1896 - China and Russia sign treaty in Moscow to form defensive alliance.
1923 - Italian premier Benito Mussolini signs a bill allowing Italian women to vote in municipal elections.
1949 - The richest gold field in South Africa is discovered in the Orange Free State.
1959 - Singapore introduces self-government.
1963 - Pope John XXIII dies at age 81.
1965 - Astronaut Edward White becomes the first American to ‘walk’ in space.
1984 - Punjab comes under virtual martial law as troops seal off India’s troubled state.
1989 - Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini dies of a heart attack.
1995 - European and Nato defence ministers agree to form a rapid deployment force in Bosnia.
1997 - Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien wins a second term in election.
1998 - A train slams into a bridge killing up to 120 people in Germany’s worst rail accident in half a century.
1999 - President Slobodan Milosevic accepts a peace plan for Kosovo.
2006 - Montenegro’s parliament declares independence, splitting from Serbia.
2009 - Meira Kumar becomes India’s first woman parliament Speaker.
2010 - A fiery inferno kills 117 after it burns through apartments in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
2012 - Dana Air jetliner, with 153 on board, crashes in Lagos, Nigeria. All are killed.
2014 - The powerful exiled leader of Pakistan’s MQM party, Altaf Hussain, is arrested in London on suspicion of money-laundering.
