BIRTHS

Walter Shipman (1929-28.02.2017), an American International Master.
Valentina Kozlovskaya (1938), a Russian Woman Grandmaster who became the 1996 Senior Women’s World Chess Champion.
Albin Planinc (1944), a Slovenian Grandmaster who won the Slovenian Chess Championship in 1968 and 1971.
Naum Rashkovsky (1946), a Russian Grandmaster and coach who was European Senior Champion in 2007.
William Watson (1962), an English Grandmaster who left chess to become a lawyer.
Rui Wang (1978), a Chinese Grandmaster.
Athanasios Mastrovasilis (1979), a Greek Grandmaster, the elder brother of GM Dimitrios Mastrovasilis.
Yuriy Ajrapetjan (1988), a Ukrainian-Armenian Grandmaster.
Daniil Dubov, Daniil (1996), who completed his final grandmaster norm at the age of 14 years, 11 months, 14 days in 2011.
Matthias Bluebaum (18.04.1997), a German Grandmaster who finished third at the World Junior Championship in 2015.

DEATHS

Rudolf Charousek (19.09.1873-1900), a Hungarian Master who was one of a few players who had a plus record against Emanuel Lasker but never played a World Championship Match.
Leonid Kubbel (1891-1942), A Soviet chess composer .

WORLD EVENTS

1480 Lucretia Borgia (d.1519), murderess, was born.
1897 The Greco-Turkish War is declared between Greece and the Ottoman Empire.
1902 Denmark became the 1st country to adopt fingerprinting to identify criminals.
1909 Joan of Arc is beatified in Rome.
1937 Leon Trotsky called for the overthrow of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
1942 Pierre Laval becomes Prime Minister of Vichy France.
1942 The first US air strike against Japan, an air squadron from the USS Hornet led by Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle (d.1993), raided Tokyo and other Japanese cities.
1946 The League of Nations was dissolved.
1946 The International Court of Justice holds its inaugural meeting in The Hague, Netherlands.
1949 Ireland leaves the British Commonwealth and becomes the Republic of Ireland.
1954 Gamal Abdel Nasser seizes power in Egypt
1961 Apr 18, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sent a letter to Pres. Kennedy with an “urgent call” to end “aggression” against Cuba.
1956 Actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier III of Monaco in a civil ceremony.
1974 Marcel Pagnol (b.1895), French writer and film director, died.
1980 The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) comes into being, with Canaan Banana as the country’s first President. The Zimbabwean dollar replaces the Rhodesian dollar as the official currency.

GAME OF THE DAY