April 4 has no owner yet

On April 4, 1968, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 39. The assassin was James Earl Ray. The news triggered racial riots in more than 100 American cities. His assassination was one of the most devastating blows to the civil rights movement and to American moral conscience.

On April 4, 1949, twelve countries from Western Europe and North America signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington D.C., founding NATO — the largest military alliance in history. The original signatories were the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Italy and Portugal. The Alliance has grown from 12 to 32 members.

On April 4, 1994 (the genocide began on April 6), in Rwanda the Genocide against the Tutsi was imminent — the systematic killing of between 500,000 and 800,000 people — mainly Tutsi — in just 100 days, by Hutu extremists. The international community and the UN did not intervene in time. The Rwandan genocide is one of the most horrifying crimes in modern history.