This Day in History — April 2
Today is the 92nd day of 2018. There are 273 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1982: Several thousand troops from Argentina seize the disputed Falkland Islands, located in the south Atlantic, from Britain. (Britain seized the islands back the following June.)
OTHER EVENTS
1932: Aviator Charles A Lindbergh and John F Condon goes to a cemetery in The Bronx, New York, where Condon turns over $50,000 to a man in exchange for Lindbergh’s kidnapped son. (The child, who was not returned, was found dead the following month.)
1968: Film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the groundbreaking science-fiction epic produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, has its world premiere in Washington, DC.
1992: Mob boss John Gotti is convicted in New York of murder and racketeering; he is later sentenced to life, and dies in prison.
2005: Pope John Paul II dies in his Vatican apartment at age 84.
2008: President George W Bush suffers a diplomatic setback when NATO allies rebuff his pleas to put former Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia on the path toward membership. Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who helped broker peace in Northern Ireland but couldn’t survive a scandal over his collection of cash from businessmen, announces he would resign.
2013: North Korea says it will restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material in what outsiders saw as its latest attempt to extract US concessions by raising fears of war.
2017: US President Donald Trump takes Senator Rand Paul to his Virginia golf course to talk health policy with the outspoken critic of the failed plan to repeal and replace so-called Obamacare.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Charlemagne, Emperor of the West (742-814); Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer (1805-1875); William Holman Hunt, English artist (1827-1910); Emile Zola, French author (1840-1902); Max Ernst (1891-1976); Buddy Ebsen, US actor (1908-2003); Sir Alec Guinness, British actor (1914-2000); Emmylou Harris, US country singer (1947- )
— AP