Easter Sunday, April 4, is the 94th day of 2010. There are 271 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

2004: Slovenes overwhelmingly vote against restoring the rights of thousands of minorities who were stripped of their citizenship when Slovenia broke away from Yugoslavia. More than 18,000 mostly Bosnians, Croats and Serbs were officially erased from state records after Slovenia declared its independence in 1991, effectively losing their right to permanent residency.

Other Notable Events

1581: England’s Queen Elizabeth I knights Francis Drake, the first English captain to circumnavigate the globe.

1902: The Rhodes scholarship is established by Cecil Rhodes, empire builder and founder of Africa’s Rhodesia.

1945: US forces liberate the Nazi death camp at Ohrdruf in Germany.

1959: Ivory Coast signs series of agreements with Niger, Upper Volta and Dahomey to form the Sahel-Benin Union.

1968: Civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

1975: A US Air Force transport plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crashes shortly after takeoff from Saigon, killing more than 130 people, most of them children.

1979: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the deposed prime minister of Pakistan, is hung after he is convicted of conspiring to murder a political opponent.

1986: Israel formally asks for access to US War Crimes Commission file on former UN secretary general Kurt Waldheim.

1990: The National’s People’s Congress, China’s legislature, approves the Basic Law, the constitution that will govern Hong Kong after it reverts to Chinese sovereignty in 1997; Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev warns republic of Estonia to rescind independence declaration.

1993: Boris Yeltsin receives a $1.6-billion US aid package for Russia intended to help him fend off attacks from hard-liners before the April 25 referendum on his reforms.

2000: West African intervention troops begin formally pulling out of Sierra Leone, amid fears the withdrawal may leave a security vacuum following the country’s brutal eight-year civil war.

2001: Sudan’s Defence Minister and 14 other military officers are killed when their plane crashes on takeoff. The loss comes during a critical point in the country’s civil war.

2005: Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, who took refuge in Russia after protesters raided his offices, formally resigns from office — a move seen as a major step toward restoring stability in his troubled country.

2007: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces the release of 15 captive British sailors and marines who were seized 13 days earlier in the northern Persian Gulf by an Iranian force which claimed they were trespassing.

2008: Child welfare officials following up on an abuse complaint took custody of 18 girls who lived at a secretive West Texas religious retreat built by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs. A total of 52 girls, aged six months to 17 years, were bused away to be interviewed.

Today’s Birthdays

Grinling Gibbons, English sculptor (1648-1721); Nicola Antonio Zingarelli, Italian composer (1752-1837); Edith Soedergran, Finnish poet (1892-1923); Marguerite Duras, French writer (1914-1996); Maya Angelou, US poet/actress (1928-); Anthony Perkins, US actor (1932-1992); Craig T Nelson, US actor (1944-); Clive Davis, US music executive (1932-); Robert Downey Jr, US actor (1965-).