Dr Alija Izetbegovic, former president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, was honoured as the Dubai International Holy Quran Award’s Islamic Personality of the Year by General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Defence Minister. Dr Izetbegovic was awarded Dh1 million during the award presentation at Za’beel Mosque, Dubai. The choice of Dr Izetbegovic as the Islamic Personality of the Year is in recognition of his struggle and distinguished contribution in serving Muslims and Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dr Izetbegovic was also honoured for his written works, which highlight the real essence of Islam and to help educate people. Dr Izetbegovic told the gathering that hatred against Islam was spreading in the West.
Other important events:
1560 Charles IX succeeds as King of France on death of Francis II.
1766 British auctioneer James Christie holds his first sale, in London. He went on to found Christie’s, the world’s oldest auction house.
1792 George Washington is re-elected as US President and John Adams as Vice-President.
1797 Napoleon Bonaparte arrives in Paris to command forces for an invasion of England.
1848 US President James Polk triggers the Gold Rush of ’49 by confirming gold was discovered in California.
1876 Fire kills 295 people at Brooklyn Theatre in New York.
1934 Parliament grants Turkish women voting and election rights.
1936 Soviet Union adopts new constitution under a Supreme Council.
1956 Union of British Togoland and Ghana is approved.
1956 British and French forces begin withdrawal from Egypt in the Suez War.
1977 Egypt breaks diplomatic relations with five Arab nations that were hostile to President Anwar Sadat’s peace overtures to Israel
1979 South Africa is expelled from a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in New Delhi.
1990 US troops arrest former Panamanian police official after he escapes from prison by helicopter and takes over national police headquarters.
1994 Russia seals the border of the breakaway republic of Chechnya.
1995 Tel Aviv district court indicts Yigal Amir, the confessed assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, along with two of his suspected accomplices.
1996 Madeleine Albright is the first woman to be named US Secretary of State.
1997 Cuauhtemoc Cardenas is inaugurated as the first popularly elected mayor of Mexico City.
2001 Afghanistan factions sign a landmark power-sharing deal to set up a 30-member interim administration headed by Hamid Karzai.
2006 Fiji’s military takes over running the country in bloodless coup.
2007 A man opens fire with a rifle at a busy Omaha department store, killing eight people before taking his own life
2008 OJ Simpson is convicted to 15 years for his kidnapping case in Las Vegas.
2009 109 people are killed in Lame Horse nightclub fire at Perm, Russia.
2012 Popular jazz musician Dave Brubeck dies at the age of 91.
2013 Former South African president Nelson Mandela dies in his home in Johannesburg at the age of 95.
2014 Nasa’s new Orion spacecraft blasts off in first step to Mars.
