Today in History
February 16
1923 - The burial chamber of King Tutankhamen’s tomb is unsealed in Egypt.
1956 - Britain abolishes the death penalty.
1959 - Fidel Castro becomes premier of Cuba after the overthrowing of Fulgencio Batista.
1968 - The first 911 telephone emergency service in the US is inaugurated in Haleyville, Alabama.
1981 - A powerful explosion rips through a stairway behind the VIP grandstand at the Karachi National Stadium minutes before Pope John Paul II celebrates mass.
1983 - “Ash Wednesday” bushfires in Victoria and South Australia claim more than 70 lives.
1986 - Arab Air ’86, the first air show, takes off in Dubai.
1989 - Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and North Yemen form common market.
1991 - Former Contra military chief Enrique Bermudez is assassinated outside downtown Managua hotel.
1992 - Israel kills a pro-Iranian Hezbollah leader Shaikh Abbas Musawi, in a helicopter raid which also killed his wife, six-year-old son and seven bodyguards.
1993 - A triple-decker ferry carrying 1,500-2,000 people capsizes and sinks off the Haiti coast, more than 1,200 die.
1994 - Greece declares a unilateral embargo on the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia in a conflict over the use of the name Macedonia.
1998 - A China Airlines plane crashes near Taipei airport killing 203 people.
2002 - Dubai Government launches the Dubai International Financial Centre.
2003 - The Kalba-Wadi Al Helou tunnel, the longest mountain pass in the Middle East, is inaugurated.
2008 - Adventurer Steve Fossett is declared dead five months after he vanishes while flying a small plane.
2009 - Samsung launches the world’s first solar-powered mobile phone.
2012 - At least 14 Palestinian children are burnt alive when their school bus collides with a truck at the Jaba’a junction between occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank.
2013 - A remote-controlled bomb targeting Shiites kills at least 63 people in Hazara, Quetta, Pakistan.
2014 - A Nepal Airlines plane crashes and kills 15 passengers and three crew in the mountainous west part of the country.
2016 - Former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali dies at 93.