Today in History

April 23

1728 - A huge fire destroys a large part of Copenhagen.

1795 - Warren Hastings, former British governor general of India, is acquitted of high treason.

1848 - French voters, with universal male suffrage for the first time, go to the polls to elect a national assembly.

1904 - United States acquires property of French Panama Canal Company.

1935 - Poland’s Constitution is adopted after nine years of discussions.

1964 - Copenhagen’s trademark Little Mermaid statue gets her head sawn off by unknown men. The head is never found and a new one is moulded and welded on her. 1969 - Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to death for killing New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

1972 - Two US Apollo 16 astronauts blast off from the moon and rejoin command ship for journey back to Earth.

1975 - US President Gerald Ford declares that the Vietnam War is over.

1990 - Namibia becomes the 160th member of the United Nations. 1991 - Tens of thousands of striking Soviet workers fill the streets in Minsk on the eve of the Communist Party plenum.

1992 - McDonald’s opens its first fast-food restaurant in the Chinese capital of Beijing.

1998 - the world’s largest floating book fair, is docked at Port Khalid in Sharjah for the first time.

2004 - US President George W. Bush takes steps to restore normal trade ties with Libya.

2006 - Hungary’s Socialist-led governing coalition wins runoff parliamentary ballots.

2007 - Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin dies of cardiac arrest.

2010 - Karting champion Christophe Hissette is killed in a crash at the Dubai Autodrome. 2011 - Yahsat, a UAE-based satellite communications company, launches its first satellite into orbit. 2013 - Kuwaiti Saud Al Sanousi wins the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

2016 - The UAE and more than 175 countries sign the historic Paris climate agreement at the United Nations headquarters.