1992- Interim Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani was elected as head of state for the next two years in a ballot in which he was the sole candidate. Delegates from across Afghanistan to the controversial and long delayed Hal-o-Aqad assembly cast 916 votes for Rabbani with 59 against and 360 abstention, Chief Justice Maulvi Mohammad Fazeli said. “Professor Rabbani is the first elected Mujahideen leader of the Islamic revolutionary state of Afghanistan,” Fazeli said. Delegates were allowed to cast their ballots only in a single blue box marked with a portrait of Rabbani.
Other Important Events
1893 - Russia signs military pact with France.
1903 - At least 600 people die in the Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago.
1911 - Dr Sun Yat-sen is elected China’s first president.
1915 - The British armoured cruiser HMS Natal explodes and sinks near Cromarty, Scotland. At least 421 people are killed.
1922 - The Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, consisting of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, joins the Soviet Union.
1933 - Romanian Prime Minister Ion Gheorghe Duca is assassinated by members of the fascist Iron Guard movement.
1940 - California’s first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway connecting Los Angeles and Pasadena, is officially opened.
1941 - Winston Churchill addresses Canadian parliament.
1947 - Romanian republic proclaimed.
1949 - France transfers sovereignty to Vietnam.
1950 - Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia become Independent states in France Union.
1965 - Ferdinand Marcos is sworn in as president of the Philippines.
1972 - The US halts its heavy bombing of North Vietnam.
1987 - Robert Mugabe is elected President of Zimbabwe.
1992 - The California grey whale is removed from the endangered species list.
1996 - A powerful bomb rips through several carriages of a train in Assam, India, killing 300 people.
1997 - Armed men massacre 412 men, women and children in four mountain villages in Algeria.
2000 - A passenger breaks into the cockpit of a British Airways flight and grabs the controls, sending the Boeing 747 into two violent nosedives before the crew regains control.
2004 - A flare lit by a concert-goer ignited the foam ceiling of a Buenos Aires nightclub, killing 175 people.
2006 - Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussain is executed.
2007 - Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki wins a second term amid allegations that the government stole the vote from opposition candidate Raila Odinga.
2008 - Former Bangladeshi prime minister Shaikh Hasina Wajed wins general elections.
2011 - Cyclone Thane kills 19 people in Tamil Nadu, India.
2012 - UAE Central Bank issues new rules restricting mortgages to expatriates to 50 per cent of the value of property.
2013 - Forty people are killed for part in an uprising in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.
2014 - A fire in a shopping mall in the Pakistani city of Lahore kills at least 13 people.
