1991 - Briton Nigel Mansell followed last weekend’s win in France with another commanding triumph when he stormed to an emotional victory in the British Grand Prix. Mansell, driving a Williams, started from pole position but did not have the perfect start and needed to recover to take the lead on the opening lap from Brazilian Ayrton Senna in a McLaren. But once he was in front, Mansell stayed there and steered his car clear of the field to win the 59-lap race in one hour 27 minutes and 35.479 seconds. Senna, after running second behind Mansell for virtually the entire race, appeared to run out of fuel on the final lap when he came to a halt halfway round the circuit. His retirement allowed McLaren teammate Gerhard Berger of Austria to come home second.
Other important events
1789 - Citizens of Paris storm and seize the Bastille prison and release prisoners, marking the start of the French Revolution.
1790 - France’s King Louis XVI accepts the revolutionary constitution.
1865 - English climber Edward Whymper leads the first team to reach the summit of the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps.
1886 - Britain and Germany agree on the frontiers of the Gold Coast and Togoland.
1934 - Oil pipeline between Iraq and Lebanon is opened.
1958 - Iraq is declared a republic after King Faisal II is killed in a military coup.
1959 - The first nuclear warship is launched, the 14,000-tonne cruiser USS Long Beach.
1965 - US space probe Mariner 4 flies by Mars, sending back photographs of the Red Planet.
1967 - The UN adopts a resolution asking Israel to halt action that was aimed at altering the city of Jerusalem after the Six-Day War.
1976 - Capital punishment is abolished in Canada.
1983 - Vladimir Salnikov of the Soviet Union breaks his own world record in the men’s 800 metres freestyle, clocking seven minutes, 52.33 seconds.
1987 - Two bomb blasts rip through a shopping area in Karachi, killing at least 72 people.
2002 - A test launch of a supersonic jetliner envisaged to replace Concorde ends in disaster after exploding in the South Australian desert.
2003 - The USS Ronald Reagan, the first carrier named for a living president, is commissioned.
2006 - Allama Hassan Turabi, chief of the main Shiite political party, is killed in a suicide attack in Karachi.
2008 - A face-scanning system is inaugurated at Abu Dhabi International Airport.
2012 - American Danny Garcia wins the WBC light welterweight belt after knocking out Britain’s Amir Khan in the fourth round in Las Vegas.
2014 - Emirates airline signs a $13 billion (Dh47.81 billion) OnPoint contract with General Electric for the maintenance, repair and overhaul of its new GE9 engines.
2015 - India’s Supreme Court suspends Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings from Indian Premier League over betting and match-fixing.
