This Day in HISTORY
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1999: A 7.5-magnitude quake rocks southern Mexico, toppling church towers and old homes in Oaxaca and shaking buildings in the capital. At least 27 people are killed and more than 120 others injured.
OTHER EVENTS
1399: King Richard II of England abdicates in favour of Henry Bolingbroke, who led a rebellion of noblemen against him.
1787: Sailing ship Columbia leaves Boston on first voyage around world by American vessel.
1791: Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute premieres in Vienna, Austria.
1846: Dentist William Morton uses ether as an anaesthetic for the first time on a patient in his Boston office.
1868: Spain’s Queen Isabella flees to France and is declared deposed.
1938: Britain, France, Germany and Italy agree at the Munich conference to transfer the Czech Sudetenland to Germany, while remaining frontiers of Czechoslovakia are guaranteed.
1942: The Nazis advance in Stalingrad, Russia. Some 990 Russian planes are destroyed against 77 German losses.
1946: International military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, finds 22 top German Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes. Eleven are sentenced to death.
1949: The Berlin Airlift, which delivers two million metric tons (2.3 million tons) of food and fuel to West Berliners while circumventing a Soviet blockade, comes to an end.
1954: The first atomic-powered vessel, the submarine Nautilus, is commissioned by the US Navy.
1958: Soviet Union resumes nuclear testing.
1962: Black American student James Meredith succeeds on his fourth try to register for classes at the University of Mississippi
1965: Six of Indonesia’s top army generals are kidnapped and killed in an abortive coup. Turmoil ensues, leading to the deaths of 300,000 communists and President Sukarno being replaced by General Suharto.
1966: Republic of Botswana gains independence from Britain.
1971: United States and Soviet Union sign pacts designed to avoid accidental nuclear war.
1978: Scores of people, mostly civilians, are reported killed around Beirut in renewed fighting between Lebanese Christians and Syrian peacekeeping troops.
1984: Egyptian court sentences 107 Muslim extremists to prison for attempting to set up Islamic regime after 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat.
1986: The United States releases accused Soviet spy Gennadiy Zakharov, after the Soviets release US journalist Nicholas Daniloff, whom the KGB accused of espionage.
1989: Non-communist Cambodian guerrillas claim capture of three towns and 10 other positions from government forces.
1990: Soviet Union and South Korea open full diplomatic relations.
1991: Haitian President Jeanbertrand Aristide is ousted by the army.
1992: Moscow banks distribute privatisation vouchers as part of a reform programme to turn millions of Russians into capitalists.
1993: An earthquake rocks south-western India, leaving more than 10,000 dead, 67 villages flattened and 120,000 homeless.
1994: Saudi Arabia and five smaller Arab countries announce a partial lifting of their economic boycott of Israel.
1995: Blind Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-rahman and nine other Islamic militants are convicted in New York for a plot to blow up New York City landmarks, including the United Nations.
1998: Two hand grenades are thrown at Israeli security forces in a downtown square in the West Bank city of Hebron, injuring 11 Israeli troops and 11 Palestinian civilians.
2000: In his first news conference, Britain’s Prince William criticises a new book about his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, written by her former private secretary.
2002: The 15 foreign ministers of the European Union vote to allow member nations to sign individual agreements with the United States, giving US soldiers and officials protection from the UN International Criminal Court.
2003: The US Justice Department announces it has begun a criminal investigation into allegations that President George W Bush’s Administration leaked the name of a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative to columnist Robert Novak in July.
2004: The Government of Brazil lashes out at reports that it has denied UN inspectors full access to its uranium-enrichment facilities because it wants to hide technology purchased on the nuclear black market.
2006: A Kurdish guerrilla group, the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, declares a unilateral ceasefire in its more than 20-year fight for autonomy in Turkey’s south-east, but does not immediately give up its weapons.
2007: Rebel forces storm an African Union base in Darfur, killing and wounding dozens of peacekeepers in the worst attack on the organisation since the conflict began in western Sudan.
2008: At least 168 people are killed in a stampede of pilgrims at a Hindu temple in Jodhpur, India.
2009: A powerful earthquake strikes western Indonesia, triggering landslides and trapping thousands under collapsed buildings, including two hospitals.
2010: The Government of Ecuador declares a state of siege after rebellious police angered by a law that cuts their benefits plunge the small South American nation into chaos, roughing up the president, shutting down airports, and blocking highways in a nationwide strike.
2011: President Barack Obama steers the US military machine into uncharted territory when a US drone attacks a convoy in Yemen and kills two American citizens who had become central figures in al-qaeda.
2012: A firefight breaks out between US forces and their Afghan army allies in eastern Afghanistan, killing two Americans and three Afghan soldiers and pushing the number of US troops killed in the long-running war to 2,000.
2013: Fourteen car bombs targeting Shiite neighbourhoods in Baghdad leave 54 people dead.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
Jean Perrin, French Nobel Prizewinning physicist (1870-1942); Hans Geiger, German physicist (1882-1945); Deborah Kerr, Scottish actress (1921-2007); Truman Capote, US author (19241984); Elie Wiesel, Romanian writer (1928-2016); Martina Hingis, Swiss tennis player (1980- ); Eric Stolz, US actor (1961- ); Jenna Elfman, US actress (1971- ); Marion Cotillard, French actress (1975- )