Today in History
March 29
1849 - Britain annexes Punjab in India by treaty with Maharaja of Lahore.
1850 - The sinks in a storm with the loss of 200 lives.
1882 - The Knights of Columbus is chartered in Connecticut.
1901 - Australia’s first federal elections are held, with Labour Party winning power.
1962 - Argentine President Arturo Frondizi is overthrown by army. 1967 - France launches its first nuclear submarine.
1971 - Army Lt. William L. Calley Jr. is convicted of murdering at least 22 Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre.
1973 - The last US troops leave South Vietnam.
1985 - An unarmed Englishman hijacks a Lufthansa jet flying from Hamburg to London and later surrenders to police at Heathrow Airport.
1989 - PLO Executive Committee nominates Yasser Arafat as President.
1990 - Prime Minister Bob Hawke leads Labour to a record fourth successive term in government after Australia’s closest election in 30 years.
2002 - Israeli troops storm into Yasser Arafat headquarters in Ramallah, West Bank.
2003 - Italian Dr Carlo Urbani, a World Health Organisation expert on communicable diseases, dies of SARS in Thailand.
2004 - Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join Nato.
2006 - Hamas formally takes over the Palestinian government.
2007 - Indonesia reopens its border with East Timor.
2008 - Earth hour marked internationally for the first time. 2010 - Terror returns to the heart of Russia, with two deadly suicide bombings on the Moscow subway at rush hour, at least 38 people are killed.
2012 - HSBC Bank Middle East announces the acquisition of Lloyds Banking Group’s UAE operations worth $769 million (Dh2.82 billion).
2013 - A massive landslide buries 83 gold miners in Tibet.
2015 - Australia wins the cricket World Cup after beating New Zealand in the final. 1993 - A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, in a majority decision, convicted former army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg for contempt of court, but did not pass any sentence against him in view of the “mitigating circumstances”. The “mitigating circumstances” were that Beg had been saying during the proceedings that he held the judiciary in the highest esteem and regretted causing any inconvenience to the court. The judgement was given by the Chief Justice, Mohammad Afzal Zullah, and two other judges agreed with him. However, another two judges held the former general guilty and wanted severe reprimand against him. The chief justice said that it was a mistake to make such a careless person the army chief.