Today in History: 1906 San Francisco earthquake leaves 200,000 homeless, 1,000 dead

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 18:

1906 – An earthquake struck San Francisco. The quake and resulting fires devastated the city, leaving over 200,000 people homeless and some 1,000 dead.

1955 – Albert Einstein, German-born scientist and mathematician, died. He formulated the theory of relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.

1983 – A suicide bomb shattered the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing at least 63 people.

1994 – Uta Pippig sets course record in 98th running of Boston Maratho.

1996 – More than 100 Lebanese refugees were killed when Israeli artillery shells ripped into a crowded U.N. peacekeepers’ base where they were sheltering.

2000 – Men in Black Alien Attack attraction opens at Universal Studios, becoming the world’s first life-size ride-through interactive video game.

2002 – Former king Mohammed Zahir Shah returned home to the Afghan capital Kabul after 29 years in exile.

2002 – Three people were killed and dozens injured when a small Piper tourist plane crashed into the 127-metre Pirelli building in Milan.

2004 – Modern Fiji’s founding father, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, died after a stroke. He was 83.

2007 – Suspected al Qaeda militants killed nearly 200 people in a wave of car bombings in Baghdad, including one near a market in the mainly Shi’ite Muslim Sadriya district that killed 140 people and wounded 150.

2007 – U.S. singer and actress Kitty Carlisle Hart died aged 96. A grande dame of the New York performing arts, her credits stretched from Broadway musicals to a Marx Brothers movie hit and stints on TV game shows.

(Reuters)