On April 11

On this day in ...
... 1992, in Mali's capital city of Bamako, the Pacte nationale (English summary) was signed with the aim of ending years of fighting between the government of Mali and Tuareg rebels in the northern part of the country. The agreement called for greater democracy in elections and governance, and a subsequent plan called for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR). The U.N. Development Programme has written of this period:

The National Pact initially brought peace. But in this poverty-stricken, drought-afflicted democracy, the newly elected government had no money to finance DDR, and western donors were remarkably unsupportive of the new President. The disappointed Tuareg movements took up arms again, determined to obtain a share of the national pie. Meanwhile, opposition parties refused to accept that they had been beaten in a fair election, bringing students into the streets. By 1994, the fragility of the government was extreme and civil war was a real threat.

... 1689 (320 years ago today), London-born Princess Mary and her Hague-born cousin, William of Orange, were crowned co-rulers of England. This coronation of William III and Mary II (left) followed William's 1688 invasion of the island country and ouster of King James II, Protestant Mary's Catholic father, on invitation of Protestants in Parliament. It's written that "Parliament ... wanted the throne to be the sole possession of Mary, with William serving as Prince Consort, but Mary refused due to her self-imposed subservience to her husband." The couple's reign was marked by armed conflict in Ireland and Flanders and by Mary's delivery of 3 stillborn children, so that on William's death in 1702 Mary's sister became England's Queen Anne.

(Prior April 11 posts are here and here.)

On December 28, ...

... 1967 (40 years ago today), after "passionate debates," France's National Assembly approved a law authorizing the use of contraceptives, though it did not permit reimbursement for contraceptives by the government's social security agency. The new law, dubbed Loi Neuwirth after the Assembly member who proposed it, displaced a 1920 law that had banned all contraception. Abortion would remain illegal in France until 1975. Here and here are Le Monde's retrospectives on the law that it says made "2 children, 3 years apart" the French standard.
... 1694, England's Queen Mary II died from smallpox in London, where she'd been born 32 years earlier. Brought up as a Protestant notwithstanding her parents' conversion to Catholicism, at age 15 Mary (right) married her cousin, William of Orange, and lived with him in Holland. After William invaded England and deposed her father, she and her husband became co-rulers of England. The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, was chartered by the couple in 1693.