Linford Christie produced the performance of his life when it mattered most to become the oldest man to win the Olympics 100 metres gold. The 32-year-old Jamaican-born Briton blasted out of the blocks, surged again at 60 metres and left the best sprinters in the world gasping in his wake as he won the coveted Olympic gold medal in 9.96 seconds. “I think it’s the best race of my life,” the jubilant Briton said after a victory lap draped in the Union Jack. Christie’s victory ahead of Namibian Frankie Fredericks, who took the silver in 10.02 seconds, and Arnerican Dennis Mitchell, who won the bronze in 10.04 seconds, created Olympic history. The previous oldest man to win the title was Allan Wells, Britain’s last Olympic 100m champion in 1980. Wells was 28 years and 83 days old when he won the title in Moscow. Christie, 32 years and 121 days, ran the race of his life to beat men up to 11 years younger.
Other important events:
1774 English minister and scientist Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen.
1793 France becomes the first country to use the metric system of weights and measures.
1831 The new London Bridge is opened by King William IV.
1876 Colorado is admitted to the union as the 38th state of the United States.
1894 Japan and China declare war on each other over dominance in Korea
1914 Germany and Russia declare war against each other during the First World War.
1936 Adolph Hitler opens the 11th Olympic Games in Berlin.
1943 The first uranium 235 production plant takes shape in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
1950 Guam becomes an unincorporated territory of US.
1960 Islamabad is declared the federal capital of the Government of Pakistan.
1965 The British Government bans cigarette advertising on television.
1966 The Chinese Communist Party opens a meeting that declares the start of the ultra-leftist Cultural Revolution, which lasts 10 years.
1988 An explosion by the Irish Republican Army kills a British soldier at an army barracks in London.
1995 A fire destroys goods worth hundreds of thousands of dirhams in the Hamriya fruit and vegetable market in Dubai.
1997 Rocket fire sends more than 7,000 Cambodian refugees fleeing to Thailand as forces of coup leader Hun Sen attack rival bases along the border.
1999 The New Maqta Bridge opens in Abu Dhabi.
2000 Philippines Ambassador Leonides Caday escapes assassination bid in Indonesia.
2002 South-east Asian nations sign a comprehensive pact with US to combat terrorism.
2005 King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia dies and Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz becomes new king.
2007 A bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, breaks into huge sections and collapses into the Mississippi River, pitching dozens of cars 60 feet into the water and killing at least four people.
2008 Emirates’ Airbus A380 takes off on its first commercial flight to New York.
2009 Philippines’ first woman president Corazon Aquino dies at the age of 76.
2010 The Netherlands pulls out troops from Afghanistan after a four-year mission.
2012 Kofi Annan steps down as UN envoy for Syria.
2013 Lana Nussaibah is sworn in as the UAE’s first woman delegate to the United Nations.
2015 Airbus CN235 military transport crashes in Colombia, killing 11 people on board.
