NOW & THEN

0 On this day in 1961 Jomo Kenyatta was freed by British authorities in Kenya after being detained for nine years self-imposed exile in the US.

1985: Mary Decker set a new women’s world record of 4:16.71 for the mile.

1986: Lake Nyos disaster in Cameroon killed at least 1,500 as poison gas formed by a mixture of carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas escaped a volcanic lake.

1991: Soviet coup collapsed. Boris Yeltsin took over troops and Supreme Soviet legislative bodies reinstated president Mikhail Gorbachev as he returned from house arrest in the Crimea region.

2001: Nato decided to send a peace-keeping force to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

2007: Hurricane Dean made its first landfall in Costa Maya, Mexico, with winds of 165mph. Dean was the first storm since Hurricane Andrew in 1992 to make landfall as a Category 5.