Naseem silences Johnson in eight rounds
1997 - Britain’s ‘Prince’ Naseem Hamed stopped American Tom ‘Boom Boom’ Johnson in the eighth round to unify two feather-weight world titles in London. American referee Kuay Battle stopped the fight after Naseem, the WBO champion, unleashed a ferocious onslaught from all angles culminating in a right uppercut which left Johnson, the IBF titleholder, unable to get up off the canvas. “You’re looking at a legend soon to be,” Naseem told reporters ringside after the win. Naseem is the first boxer to fell the American who had defended his title no less than 11 times.
February 8
1587 - Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded after being accused of plotting the murder of England’s Queen Elizabeth I.
1904 - The Russo-Japanese War begins.
1910 - The Boy Scouts of America are incorporated.
1924 - The first US execution by gas takes place at the Nevada State Prison.
1950 - The first-ever payment by credit card is made when the founders of Diners Club pay their restaurant bill at Major’s Cabin Grill in New York City.
1955 - Soviet Prime Minister Georgy Malenkov resigns.
1962 - US military council is established in South Vietnam.
1963 - Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul Kareem Qasim is assassinated in Baghdad.
1971 - The Nasdaq stock market opens for the first time.
1984 - The UAE’s Ambassador to France, Khalifa Ahmad Abdul Aziz Al Mubarak, is shot dead in Paris.
1985 - South Korean opposition leader Kim Dea-jung is put under house arrest after returning from the US.
1986 - A passenger train and a freight train collide in Alberta, Canada, killing at least 29 people.
1990 - Punctured oil tanker leaks over 950,000 litres of oil into the Pacific.
1992 - US-European Ulysses space probe passes Jupiter.
1993 - The Czech Republic’s Karel Novacek wins the first Dubai Open Tennis Tournament.
1995 - A powerful earthquake rocks Colombia, killing at least 38 people and injuring more than 230 others.
1996 - A cargo plane crashes into a market in Kinshasa, Zaire, killing at least 350 people.
2005 - Israel and the Palestinian National Authority sign a truce at the Sharm Al Shaikh Summit, ending the four-year Second Intifada.
2006 - Nepal goes to polls after seven years.
2007 - Rival Palestinian leaders sign ‘Makkah Declaration’ to form a national unity government
2013 - Fares Al Sultan and Deirdre Casey set records at the Tri Yas triathlon at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi.
2014 - A fire kills at least 15 people at a pilgrim hotel in Madinah, Saudi Arabia.
