Gali sworn in as UN Secretary-General
1991 - Egyptian Deputy Premier Boutros Boutros Gali was sworn in as the United Nations Secretary-General and pledged to work for international peace and security and to foster development and democracy. In a speech to the General Assembly, which appointed him by acclamation, the 69-year-old Gali promised to follow “an active, preventive diplomacy, with a view to monitoring developments of crises, and devising adequate means to defuse them and prevent their escalation”. He also stressed the UN’s role in strengthening fundamental “freedoms and democratic institutions”. Gali declared: “If there is no development without democracy, there can also be no democracy without development.” Gali took his oath in Arabic to a packed Assembly hall.
December 3
1694 - Triennial Bill becomes law in England, providing for new Parliament to be elected every third year.
1808 - Madrid surrenders to Napoleon Bonaparte’s French forces.
1810 - British capture Mauritius from French.
1828 - Andrew Jackson is elected the seventh President of the United States.
1912 - Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro sign an armistice.
1965 - The Soviet Union launches its Luna 8 space probe.
1967 - Led by Dr Christiaan Barnard, surgeons in Cape Town perform the first human heart transplant.
1971 - India declares a state of emergency as Pakistani fighter jets attack northwestern India.
1976 - Patrick Hillery becomes President of Ireland.
1984 - Thousands of people die of poison gas leaks from Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India.
1990 - Thousands of Lebanese troops take control of a militia-free Beirut after 15 years of civil war.
1991 - Alann Steen, an American held hostage for nearly five years, is released by Shiite kidnappers in Beirut.
1992 - A Greek oil tanker runs aground, splits in two and catches fire, spilling thousands of gallons of crude oil off Spain’s rugged northeast coast.
1995 - Former South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan is arrested and jailed on charges of military rebellion stemming from a 1979 coup.
2000 - Pakistan offers a truce to Indian soldiers along the disputed Kashmir border.
2001 - Israel attacks Palestinian targets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in response to suicide bombings by the militant group Hamas that killed 25 people.
2006 - The Dubai Financial Market launches its new index, the DFM General Index.
2007 - Sri Lankan cricketer Muttiah Muralitharan sets a new world record by taking 709 wickets in Test cricket.
2010 - A Chinese passenger train sets a record speed of 486km/h during a test run between Beijing and Shanghai.
2015 - Oscar Pistorius is found guilty of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
