Monday, September 13

2004-09-13 07:16

Highlights in History

1536 - Holy Roman Emperor Charles V abandons siege of Marseilles after disastrous campaign and sails from Genoa to Barcelona.

1586 - Anthony Babington and fellow conspirators go on trial for attempting to seize throne of England for Mary Queen of Scots by plotting to murder Queen Elizabeth I.

1759 - After a two-month siege of Quebec, British forces scale the Heights of Abraham to engage and defeat the French.

1788 - Denmark invades Sweden; the first US national election is authorised.

1882 - British defeat Egyptians at Tel el-Kebir, Lower Egypt, and proceed to occupy Egypt and the Sudan.

1853 - Bain's Kloof is opened to traffic.

1943 - Chiang Kai-shek becomes president of China.

1948 - Republican Margaret Chase Smith of Maine is elected to the US Senate, becoming the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress.

1955 - West Germany and Soviet Union establish diplomatic relations.

1964 - Egypt and Saudi Arabia announce agreement of peaceful settlement of two-year-old Yemeni civil war.

1966 - BJ Vorster becomes the seventh Prime Minister of South Africa.

1968 - The Rhodesian Appeal Court recognises the legality of Rhodesian Government, headed by Ian Smith.

1970 - Israel arrests 450 Arabs in occupied Jordan and says it will exchange them for hostages held by guerrillas.

1971 - A four-day inmates' rebellion at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York ends as police and guards storm the prison; the ordeal and final assault kills 43 people.

1982 - At least 700 persons are killed and 17 million left homeless by floods across the north and east of India during the monsoon season since June.

1986 - Iraqi warplanes bomb five airfields in Iran as demonstrators seek revenge for Iran's missile attack on Baghdad.

1988 - Heavy combat in rebel strongholds in northern El Salvador kills or wounds more than 30 leftist guerrillas and government troops.

1988 - Three detainees, all prominent members of anti-apartheid organisations, escape from a hospital and take refuge in the US consulate in Johannesburg. The three - Murphy Morobe, Mohammed Moosa and Vusi Khanyile - are permitted by the US to stay in the consulate.

1989 - More than 35 000 people force central Cape Town to a standstill as they march peacefully from St George's Cathedral to the city hall to protest against police violence.

1990 - A New York State appeals court lifts a temporary ban imposed a day earlier against the US publication of a book written by Victor Ostrovsky, a former member of Israel's Mossad intelligence service

1990 - Gangs of armed men kill at least 26 commuters on a train travelling between George Goch and Denver stations in Johannesburg.

1991 - The US and the Soviet Union agree to discontinue their military aid to government and rebel forces in Afghanistan after more than a year of US-Soviet negotiations aimed at bringing a settlement in the 12-year-old Afghan civil war.

1993 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat shake hands on the lawn of the White House at the signing of a peace accord providing for mutual recognition and Palestinian control over Gaza and the West Bank.

1994 - At UN International Conference on Population and Development, 180 nations adopt a 20-year blueprint to slow world population growth.

1995 - A military transport aircraft crashes into the sea off the coast of western Sri Lanka killing all 75 people on board.

1996 - Pentagon announces it's sending 5,000 additional Army troops to Kuwait.

1997 - Mother Teresa is buried in Calcutta.

1998 - The Yugoslav republic of Montenegro deports thousands of Kosovo refugees to Albania.

1999 - The fourth major blast in Russia in two weeks destroys an apartment building in Moscow and kills 118 people.

2000 - Wen Ho Lee, US government researcher and a Taiwanese-born naturalized US citizen, is set free with an apology from a judge, nine months after the US government branded him a threat to national security and put in solitary confinement.

2001 - An international arrest warrant is issued for Peru's exiled former President Alberto Fujimori for his alleged role in massacres by the Grupo Colina paramilitary death squad in the early 1990s.

Today's Birthdays:

Walter Reed, US bacteriologist (1851-1901)
Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian-born composer (1874-1951)
Claudette Colbert, US actress (1903-1996); Roald Dahl, British writer (1916-1990)
Oscar Arias Sanchez, president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1941--)
Jacqueline Bisset, British actress (1944--)
Michael Johnson, US athlete (1967--).

Thought for Today:

We do not attach ourselves lastingly to anything that has not cost us care, labour or longing - Honore de Balzac, French dramatist (1799-1850).

- SAPA