January 18 » An X-ray generating machine is exhibited for the first time by H. L. Smith.
February 21 » An Englishman raised in Australia, Bob Fitzsimmons, fought an Irishman, Peter Maher, in an American promoted event which technically took place in Mexico, winning the 1896 World Heavyweight Championship in boxing.
April 6 » In Athens, the opening of the first modern Olympic Games is celebrated, 1,500 years after the original games are banned by Roman emperor Theodosius I.
May 18 » Khodynka Tragedy: A mass panic on Khodynka Field in Moscow during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II results in the deaths of 1,389 people.
May 27 » The F4-strength St. Louis–East St. Louis tornado hits in St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois, killing at least 255 people and causing over $10-million in damage.
December 14 » The Glasgow Underground Railway is opened by the Glasgow District Subway Company.
Day of death November 4, 1978
The temperature on November 4, 1978 was between 7.0 °C and 11.9 °C and averaged 9.3 °C. There was -0.1 mm of rain. There was 0.2 hours of sunshine (2%). The partly clouded was. The average windspeed was 2 Bft (weak wind) and was prevailing from the south-southwest. Source: KNMI
In The Netherlands , there was from Monday, December 19, 1977 to Friday, September 11, 1981 the cabinet Van Agt I, with Mr. A.A.M. van Agt (CDA/KVP) as prime minister.
April 28 » President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, is overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by pro-communist rebels.
May 8 » The first ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler.
July 25 » Birth of Louise Joy Brown, the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilisation, or IVF.
September 7 » While walking across Waterloo Bridge in London, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov is assassinated by Bulgarian secret police agent Francesco Gullino by means of a ricin pellet fired from a specially-designed umbrella.
November 18 » In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple to a mass murder–suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.
December 22 » The pivotal Third Plenum of the 11th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is held in Beijing, with Deng Xiaoping reversing Mao-era policies to pursue a program for Chinese economic reform.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Hendrik Dreyer, "Dreyer Tree", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/dreyer-tree/I7842.php : accessed January 31, 2026), "Christoffel Jacobus Dreyer (1896-1978)".
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