21 APRIL

1897 - Mariano R. Marcos, educator, lawyer, lawmaker and father of future Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, is born in Batac, Ilocos Norte;  raised as militant follower of Gregorio Aglipay and the Philippine Independent Church, he will be elected a congressman under the Nacionalista Party but, following his lost in the 1935 elections for the National Assembly, will be accused, tried, but acquitted of killing Rep. Julio Nalundasan (his son, Ferdinand Marcos, along with his brother-in-law, will be convicted  but later acquitted of the crime on appeal to the Supreme Court).

754 BC - According to legendary tradition, Rome is founded by Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, on the site where they were supposedly suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants;  the foundation myth says that Romulus will later kill Remus before jointly ruling with the Sabine king Titus Tatius who will meet an early death, and will then reign for a long and peaceful period.


1975 - South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resigns, accusing the United States of betrayal during a scathing television and radio address; Thieu suggests that US State Secretary Henry Kissinger tricked him into signing the Paris Peace Agreement two years ago but without providing military support to fight off the North Vietnamese forces who have been able to demolish Saigon's last line of defense in Xuan Loc district a day earlier.

1987 - More than a 100 people are killed and nearly 300 wounded in a bomb that has exploded during rush hour in a major bus terminal in Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital; the Tamil Tiger rebels will be blamed for the explosion, considered one of the worst mass killings in the long-running feud between the island's two main ethnic groups, the Tamils and the Sinhalese.