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Steve Davis in 2012

The 1984 World Snooker Championship was a ranking professional snooker tournament that took place between 21 April and 7 May at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. The event was organised by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, and was the eighth consecutive World Snooker Championship to be held at the Crucible since the 1977 event. It featured 94 participants, of which 78 players competed in a qualifying event held at the Redwood Lodge in Bristol. The defending champion was English player Steve Davis (pictured), who had won the title twice previously. He met Jimmy White in the final, which was played as a best-of-35-frames match. Davis won 18–16, becoming the first player to retain the title at the Crucible. Rex Williams secured the championship's highest break, scoring a 138 in the 12th frame of his first-round loss to White. Eight century breaks were made during the competition, the fewest since the 1978 event. (Full article...)

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In the news

Flooding in Bahrain

Flooding (pictured) in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula leaves more than thirty people dead.
The historic Børsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, is severely damaged by a fire.
A knife attack in Sydney, Australia, leaves seven people dead.
In retaliation for an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Iran conducts missile and drone strikes against Israel.
In the South Korean legislative election, the Democratic Party–led opposition alliance increases its majority in parliament.

On this day

April 21

Wignacourt Aqueduct

900 – A debt was pardoned by the chief of Tondo on the island of Luzon and recorded on the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, the earliest known calendar-dated document found in the Philippines.
1615 – The Wignacourt Aqueduct (pictured) in Malta was inaugurated and was used to carry water to Valletta for about 300 years.
1836 – Forces of the Republic of Texas led by Sam Houston defeated the Mexican troops of General Antonio López de Santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive and final battle of the Texas Revolution.
1975 – South Vietnamese president Nguyễn Văn Thiệu resigned on hearing of the fall of Xuân Lộc, the last battle of the Vietnam War.
2021 – The Indonesian Navy submarine Nanggala sank, resulting in the deaths of all 53 people on board.

Pope Alexander II (d. 1073)
Antonín Kammel (b. 1730)
Cheryl Gillan (b. 1952)

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Today's featured picture

Walter White (1893–1955) was an American civil rights activist who led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for a quarter of a century, from 1929 until his death. He directed a broad program of legal challenges to racial segregation and disfranchisement. Under his leadership, the NAACP oversaw the plans and organizational structure of the fight against public segregation in the United States. He worked with President Harry S. Truman on desegregating the armed forces after World War II and gave him a draft of Executive Order 9981 to implement this. Under White's leadership, the NAACP set up its Legal Defense Fund, which conducted numerous legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement, and achieved many successes. This photograph of White was taken by Clara Sipprell around 1950, and is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Photograph credit: Clara Sipprell; restored by Adam Cuerden

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