Refugees from Rwanda who have been forced to flee their homes by 12 days of ethnic carbage, are checked on April 19, 1994 at Gasenyi border, about 230kms (144 miles) northwest of Bujumbura, before being sent to a refugee camp. More than 30,000 refugees have reportedly arrived in this country since 06 April. On April 6, 1994, the death of the Presidents of Burundi and Rwanda in a plane crash caused by a rocket attack, triggered several weeks of systematic and large-scale massacres targeting the Tutsi population and moderate Hutus. The number of murdered victims of the Rwandan genocide is about 800,000. Between 150,000 and 250,000 women were also raped. (Photo by Pascal GUYOT / AFP) (Photo by PASCAL GUYOT/AFP via Getty Images)
Today is Monday, April 7, the 97th day of 2025. There are 268 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On April 7, 1994, a day after the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi died in a missile attack on their aircraft, the moderate Hutu prime minister of Rwanda, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, and her husband were killed by Rwandan soldiers; in the 100 days that followed, Hutu extremists slaughtered hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and Hutu moderates.
Also on this date:
In 1862, Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell defeated Confederate forces at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.
In 1922, Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall signed a secret deal to lease U.S. Navy petroleum reserves in Wyoming and California to his friends, oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny, in exchange for cash gifts; Fall would eventually be sentenced to prison on bribery and conspiracy charges in what became known as the Teapot Dome Scandal.
In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower held a news conference in which he outlined the concept of the “domino theory” as he spoke of the importance of containing the spread of communism in Indochina, saying, “You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.”
In 1966, the U.S. Navy recovered a hydrogen bomb that the U.S. Air Force had lost in the Mediterranean Sea off Spain following a B-52 crash.
In 1984, the Census Bureau reported that Los Angeles had overtaken Chicago as the nation’s “second city” in terms of population.
In 2022, the Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, securing her place as the court’s first Black female justice.
Today’s Birthdays:
- Country musician Bobby Bare is 90.
- Former California Gov. Jerry Brown is 87.
- Film director Francis Ford Coppola is 86.
- Musician John Oates is 77.
- Singer-songwriter Janis Ian is 74.
- Actor Jackie Chan is 71.
- Football Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett is 71.
- Former boxer James “Buster” Douglas is 65.
- Actor Russell Crowe is 61.
- Actor-comedian Bill Bellamy is 60.
- Football Hall of Famer Ronde Barber is 50.
- Baseball Hall of Famer Adrián Beltré is 46.