This Day in History: Morocco and Spain signed a declaration recognising Morocco’s independence

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 7:

1939 – Italian troops invaded Albania.

1947 – Henry Ford, the U.S. motor manufacturer who pioneered assembly line mass production, died.

1953 – Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden was elected secretary-general of the United Nations.

1956 – Morocco and Spain signed a declaration recognising Morocco’s independence.

1990 – The Scandinavian Star, a Bahamas-registered ferry operated by the Da No Line, caught fire while sailing from Norway to Denmark; 158 people were killed.

2001 – NASA launched the Mars Odyssey from Cape Canaveral on a $297 million mission to search for water on Mars.

2004 – Robert Sangster, one of the world’s top racehorse owners, whose green and blue colours won 27 European Classics and more than 100 Group One races, died aged 67.

2005 – India and Pakistan launched the first bus service in almost 60 years to link Indian-controlled Kashmir with Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.

2007 – The American software mogul Charles Simonyi, who helped to found Microsoft, become the world’s fifth space tourist when he blasted into orbit aboard the Russian spaceship Soyuz TMA-10 along with two Russian cosmonauts.

2008 – The jury ruled that Princess Diana and her lover Dodi al-Fayed were unlawfully killed by the grossly negligent driving of chauffeur Henri Paul and paparazzi photographers pursuing their limousine into a Paris road tunnel in 1997.

2009 – Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was convicted of human rights crimes and sentenced to 25 years in prison, the first time a democratically elected Latin American president has been found guilty in his own country of such offences.

(Reuters)