Today in History

February 12

1736 - Nadir Shah becomes King of Persia

1840 - The Housatonic Railroad opens in Connecticut, US.

1870 - Women in the Utah Territory gain the right to vote.

1885 - German East Africa Company is chartered.

1935 - The American airship USS Macon crashes and sinks in a storm off the coast of California.

1953 - Britain and Egypt agree to end Anglo-Egyptian rule in Sudan

1973 - First American prisoners of war from the Vietnam conflict released.

1986 - Britain and France sign treaty for building rail tunnel under the English channel.

1990 - At least 18 die in ethnic rioting in Dushanbe, capital of Soviet republic of Tajikistan.

1993 - Ousted Mali dictator Mousa Traore and three top aides are sentenced to death for ordering the killing of protesters.

1994 - Norwegian Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ is stolen from a museum in Oslo.

1996 - Yasser Arafat is sworn in as the first elected Palestinian President.

1997 - Hwang Jang Yop, a confidant of North Korean leader Kim Jong II, defects in Beijing and seeks asylum in South Korea.

1998 - Sudan’s first vice-president and at least seven others are killed when their plane overshoots a runway and plunges into a river in southern Sudan.

1999 - The US Senate acquits William Jefferson Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice.

2000 - Charles Schulz, creator of the immensely popular Peanuts comic strip, dies.

2002 - Iran Air Tours flight 956 crashes into a mountain in Iran killing 117 people.

2007 - The 14th session of the UAE’s Federal National Council, the first to include elected members, is inaugurated.

2008 - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologises on behalf of the Australian government to indigenous people for past injustices.

2009 - Forty-nine people are killed after a Continental Connection aircraft crash-lands into a house in New York.

2016 - The DP World’s 330-metre berth at Nhava Sheva Gateway Terminal in Mumbai is inaugurated.