Commentaries by Surya Simran Vudathu | University of Nottingham

On April 2, 1998, Maurice Papon was convicted of war crimes for his role in deporting French Jews to concentration camps during the Nazi occupation of France. Under German occupation, Papon served as the supervisor of the Service for Jewish Questions in Bordeaux from which he collaborated with the Nazi SS and oversaw the deportation of 1,560 Jewish men, women, and children to concentration camps. Read a biography of Maurice Papon from the BBC.

On April 2, 1970, the Governor of Massachusetts signed into law an anti-Vietnam War bill providing that no inhabitant of Massachusetts inducted into or serving in the armed forces "shall be required to serve" abroad in an armed hostility that had not been declared a war by Congress under Article I, Section 8, clause 11 of the United States Constitution. Supporters of the legislation hoped that the US Supreme Court would seize on the obvious conflict that the bill created between state and federal law and would rule on the constitutionality of the Vietnam War itself, but the Court refused to exercise original jurisdiction, forcing the case into the lower federal courts.

On April 2, 1895, the libel trial of the Marquess of Queensberry began on allegations that he called Oscar Wilde a "posing somdomite [sic]". The trial led to the disclosure of details of Wilde's personal life that eventually resulted in his imprisonment for homosexuality. Read about the trials of Oscar Wilde.