4 September It Happened Today

1907  Death of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg.

1948  Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicates in favour of her daughter.

1965  Death of French Nobel Prize winner, Albert Schweitzer.

1970  Russian ballerina Natalia Makarova defects to the west.

1981  Birth of American singer Beyonce Knowles.

1987  Mathias Rust, the West German teenager who landed a small plane in Red Square, Moscow, is sentenced to four years in a labour camp.

1989 Death of Belgian novelist Georges Simenon.