General Michel Aoun left Lebanon for exile after 10 months in the French Embassy, but remains for many of his fellow Christians a vital symbol of Lebanese nationalism. A senior Lebanese official said Aoun left for Cyprus before dawn aboard a French naval vessel and will go on to France to take up exile there. Aoun was pardoned in a general amnesty. The popularity of the 55-year-old Maronite Christian general, who became de facto president amid a political crisis in 1988 and fought a failed “War of Liberation” against Syria in 1989, is especially high among Christians. His release capped 10 months of negotiations with the French government. Under the amnesty terms, Aoun is banned from Lebanon for five years and must refrain from all political activity.
Other important events:
1842 Treaty of Nanking ends the First Opium War.
1885 The world’s first motorcycle made by German engineer Gottlieb Daimler, is patented.
1909 The world’s first air race, held in Rheims, France, is won by American aviator Glenn Curtiss.
1913 Pieter Cort Van der Linden becomes Prime Minister of the Netherlands
1935 Queen Astrid of Belgium is killed in accident.
1949 The Soviet Union successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, code name “First Lightning”.
1952 Pyongyang, capital of North Korea, undergoes heaviest air raid of the Korean war.
1960 Jordan’s Premier Hazza Al Majali is assassinated
1965 US astronauts L. Gordon Cooper and Charles Conrad make safe landing after a record eight days of orbiting around Earth in Gemini 5.
1981 A bomb explodes outside the door of the Iranian radio and television office in Beirut, killing one person.
1991 The Soviet parliament suspends all activities of the Communist Party ending the 75-year control of the Soviet Union.
1993 A dam burst in China’s Qinghai province kills at least 223 people.
1992 The last Russian diplomats pull out of Kabul, Afghanistan.
1994 Palestinians of the West Bank are given control over civilian government.
1997 Hooded men kill more than 300 people in an Algerian farm village.
1998 A Cuban airplane bursts into flames and crashes during takeoff from Quito, Ecuador, killing 79 people.
1999 East Timorese vote in a historic referendum on independence from Indonesia.
2001 A Spanish regional airline Binter Mediterraneo crash-lands on highway and killing four people.
2003 A car bomb kills at least 82 outside one of the holiest Shiite shrines in the Iraqi city of Najaf.
2006 The euro rises above 150 yen in Tokyo for the first time.
2007 Nelson Mandela’s statue is unveiled opposite the Houses of Parliament in London.
2010 Thousands of Indonesians evacuate from the slopes of Sinabung volcano after its eruption for the first time in 400 years.
2013 At least 41 people are killed in a bus crash west of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
2015 Briton Mo Farah becomes the first man to win back-to-back world distance doubles when he stormed to 5,000 metres victory in Beijing, China.
