4 APRIL

1899 - During the height of the Philippine-American War, the presumptuous administration of United States President William McKinley through the Schurman Commission issues a proclamation promising self-government to Filipinos; the Schurman Commission, formed by McKinley as a fact-finding civilian mission “to facilitate the most humane, pacific, and effective extension of authority" throughout the Southeast Asian archipelago  on January 30, 1899 5 days before the Phil-Am War commenced serves as proof that the US all along had imperialistic design on the Philippines.

1968 - Dr. Martin Luther King, American black civil rights leader, is shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee just before he was to lead a march of sanitation workers protesting against low wages and poor working conditions; King's assassination will result to rioting in over 100 United States cities and  the supposed assassin, James Earl Ray, will confess and be convicted but will later retract and will claim a conspiracy.

1976 - A mass demonstration erupts in Beijing aiming to pay final tribute to Zhou Enlai, first Premier of the People's Republic of China and key figure in the development of the Chinese Communist economy, who died on weeks earlier on January 8; the demonstration to be later called the Tiananmen Incident,  is the culmination of public movement against Enlai's political enemies, the "Gang of Four" which had tried to outlaw all public demonstrations of mourning, as well as blocked the media coverage of the eulogy for the late leader.


1979 - Deposed Pakistani Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, is hanged in spite of international calls for clemency after being deposed in a military coup 18 months earlier; a court trial widely seen as unfair under the military regime of Gen. zia ul-Haq has found Bhutto guilty for the murder of a political opponent.