📜 This Day in History

April 6

• 1652Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck landed at Table Bay in southern Africa, establishing a settlement that later became known as Cape Town.
• 1809Napoleonic Wars: British forces captured the French frigate Niémen in the Bay of Biscay.
• 1941World War II: German forces invaded Greece and Yugoslavia.
• 1994The aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down in Kigali; the event became the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide.
• 2010Naxalite–Maoist insurgency: Insurgents from the Communist Party of India (Maoist) ambushed a Central Reserve Police Force convoy in Dantewada district, India, killing 76 officers.
• 2026During the Artemis II mission, the Orion made its closest approach to the far side of the Moon and reached its greatest distance from Earth.

Born on this day

• 1135Maimonides, Jewish philosopher, Torah scholar, physician and astronomer (March 30 also proposed, died 1204)
• 1812Alexander Herzen, Russian philosopher and author (died 1870)
• 1928James Watson, American biologist, geneticist, and zoologist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2025)
• 1963Rafael Correa, Ecuadorian economist and politician, 54th President of Ecuador