Quick glance of 8 April in the pages of History

April 8: Here are the major events that occurred on 8 April….

• 8 April, 1674: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj honoured Hansaji Mohite with the degree of ‘Hambirrao’ and appointed him as the Chief General of his Army.
• 8 April, 1759: British troops chase French out of Masulipatam in India.
• 8 April, 1796: Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician, proves the quadratic reciprocity law (the ability to determine the solvability of any quadratic equation in modular arithmetic).

• 8 April, 1820: The famous ancient Greek statue, Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Milos.
• 8 April, 1857: Mangal Pandey has been an inspirational figure for all Indians since his heroics in the First War of India’s Independence against British East India company which later widespread and became the great rebellion of 1857. The greasing of bullets with cow and pig fat was the immediate cause behind this unrest as it was offensive to both Hindu and Muslim soldiers.
• 8 April, 1894: Death of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. He was an influential figure of the Bengali renaissance and the man who composed India’s national song ‘Vande Mataram’, lived and died in the 19th century, but his body of work left a lasting impression on readers long after his death.

• 8 April, 1919: Mahatma Gandhi arrested on way to Delhi for refusal to comply with order not to enter Punjab; escorted back to Bombay; outbreaks of violence in several towns.
• 8 April, 1929: On this day, Bhagat Singh, along with freedom fighter Batukeshwar Dutt, hurled two bombs inside the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi to protest against an unfavourable Bill. Interestingly, their actual intentions behind this defiant act was to get arrested and to use the subsequent court appearances to further the cause of their organisation Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) for India’s independence.

• 8 April, 1950: Then Prime Minister of India Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and then President of Pakistan Ayub Khan signed the Indus Waters Treaty.
• 8 April, 1959: A team of computer manufacturers, users, and university people led by Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be called COBOL.
•  8 April, 1999: Haryana Gana Parishad, a political party in the Indian state of Haryana, merges with the Indian National Congress.