Anniversaries and commemorations come and go daily. Most of us, even the best historians, miss most occasions. If we think of history as events then we are faced with a continually showering in the grains of sand. Nevertheless, we do pick out certain patterns in the remembrance of historical dates. The blog here reminds us of some dates where the local, state, national, and global perspectives entwine.
What Time is It? It is flow of a sandstorm that will on each day compress somewhere into a structure – sandstone, selected and only remembered in the longue durée.
On Sunday, 8 April 1945, The SS begins to evacuate the Buchenwald concentration camp; inmates in the Buchenwald Resistance call for American aid and overpower and kill the remaining guards.
On Wednesday, 8 April 1970, A huge gas explosion at a subway construction site in Osaka, Japan kills 79 and injures over 400.
On Wednesday, 8 April 1970, Israeli Air Force F-4 Phantom II fighter bombers kill 47 Egyptian school children at an elementary school in what is known as Bahr el-Baqar massacre. The single-floor school is hit by five bombs and two air-to-ground missiles.
On Sunday, 8 April 1990, In Nepal, Birendra of Nepal lifts a ban on political parties following violent protests.
On Sunday, 8 April 1990, In the Greek legislative election, the conservative New Democracy wins the most seats in the Hellenic Parliament; its leader, Konstantinos Mitsotakis, becomes Prime Minister of Greece on April 11.
On Sunday, 8 April 1990, In the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Socialist Republic of Slovenia holds Yugoslavia’s first multiparty election since 1938. After the election, a center-right coalition led by Lojze Peterle forms Yugoslavia’s first non-Communist government since 1945.
On Thursday, 8 April 2010, The Governor of Tasmania commissions David Bartlett to form a minority Labor government with the conditional support of the Tasmanian Greens, following the hung parliament result of the 2010 state election.
On Wednesday, 8 April 2015, Three of four children die and their mother survives when a car driven by their mother plunges into a Melbourne lake.
On Wednesday, 8 April 2015, Prime Minister Tony Abbott announces a national task force after revelations of ice use and related suicides in the Australian Navy.
On Wednesday, 8 April 2015, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announces that she will not change Parliamentary rules, which were introduced by the Newman Government, to reject the vote of ex-Labor MP Billy Gordon, after he refused to quit Parliament and said he would support Labor as an Independent MP.
Images Citations in Composite: ID 17208541 © Anhong | Dreamstime.com; ID 35001957 © DiversityStudio1 | Dreamstime.com; ID 156394527 © Gerd Zahn | Dreamstime.com
Neville Buch
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