Gday...

1890  -     Joseph Merrick, the 'Elephant Man', dies.

1961  -     The trial of Adolf Eichmann, 'Chief Executioner of the Third Reich', begins.

1965  -     271 people are killed in the third deadliest tornado outbreak in US history.

1992  -    It is reported that a tiny tooth has changed beliefs about the origins of Australian marsupials.

The scientific world has long upheld the belief that marsupials are an inferior species, only surviving in Australia due to the absence of placental mammals. For years, it was believed that, when the Australian continental land mass broke away from the Antarctic, marsupials were the only mammals present. They were then able to thrive, in the isolation of an island continent.
On 11 April 1992, Science News reported that an ancient tiny fossil tooth from a placental mammal had been discovered in New South Wales. This discovery overturned traditional belief that marsupials dominated the continent by default. The presence of the tiny tooth has proven to the scientific world that marsupials were forced to compete with placental mammals, resulting in the eventual extinction of the latter.

2008  -     It is reported that a perfectly preserved baby woolly mammoth has given scientists the most detailed information regarding mammoth physiology. 

On 11 April 2008, newspapers and scientific publications reported that the discovery of a perfectly preserved baby mammoth a year earlier had given new insights into the physiology of woolly mammoths. "Lyuba" was a female baby mammoth so named after the wife of the nomadic reindeer tribesman who found it. The mammoth calf was found in the remote Yamalo-Nenetsk region in May 2007. One hundred and thirty centimetres long, 90 centimetres tall and weighing only 50 kilogrammes, the creatures was estimated to have been between three and four months old at the time it died.
The body of the mammoth was so perfectly preserved that it still had its trunk intact, eyes inplace and small tufts of fur on its skin. Using computer tomography (CT) scans, scientists were able to gain 3-D images of Lyuba's innards, including her heart, liver, and other organs. The presence of silt and mud in its trunk, mouth, and digestive tract indicated the mammoth had died by drowning.

Cheers - John