22 APRIL 1451: Born Isabella I - Queen of Spain 1500: Pedro Alvarez Cabral discovered Brazil and claimed it for the King of Portugal. 1509: Henry VIII becomes King of England, upon the death of his father, Henry VII. 1724: Birth of Immanuel Kant, German philosopher who wrote the Critique of Pure Reason, a classic work. He was very much a person of order and method. People could set their watches by his constitutional walk, it was said. 1760: The first known pair of roller-skates were worn by a young Belgian musical instrument maker who rolled into a London party while playing a violin, finally crashing into a mirror. 1769: Madame du Barry became Louis XV’s official mistress. 1838: The first steamship to cross the Atlantic to New York from England was the British packet steamer, Sirius. The journey took 18 days and ten hours. 1864: The motto In God We Trust is required on all US coins minted as legal tender. 1867: The new 'Exchange News Room' opened in Liverpool for subscribers to recad all the newspapers. 1870: Birth of Lenin (Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov), leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, who prepared the way for the acceptance of the doctrines of Marx and Engels, mainly in exile. 1881: Birth of Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky. A few days after the Tsar was deposed, in April 1917, Lenin was sent in a sealed train by arrangement with the Germans back to Petrograd, to organize the overthrow of the moderate provisional government led by Kerensky. Deposed by Lenin and his Bolsheviks, Kerensky fled to Austria. In 1940, he went to Australia, moving six years later to the US. 1915: The Germans used chlorine (poison gas) for the first time on the Western front at Ypres, blinding French Canadian troops and French Zouaves. 1952: South African Prime Minister Daniel F Malan introduced legislation to make parliament the highest court in the land and so passed the apartheid bill which had been previously invalidated by the South African Supreme Court. 1964: British businessman Greville Wynne, imprisoned by the Russians for spying, was swapped for the Russian spy Gordon Lonsdale, who was jailed by the British for his role in the Portland espionage ring in 1961. 1969: British lone-yachtsman, Robin Knox-Johnston completed his solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world in just 312 days in his 32 ft ketch, Suhaili. 1981: Tate and Lyle factory in Liverpool closed down. 1983: £1 coins were introduced into Britain, replacing paper money. 1992: Frank Bruno knocked out Jose Ribalta at Wembley Stadium. 2000: Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez is reunited with his father near Washington, DC. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.351 / Virus Database: 197 - Release Date: 19/04/02