Hundreds of bodies were recovered from beaches, homes and hotels ravaged by the second tsunami to hit Indonesia in as many years, pushing the death toll to more than 600 and more than 200 were missing. The government, meanwhile, acknowledged it received regional warnings about the impending disaster but did not pass them on to threatened communities along Java island’s southern coast. But even if it had attempted to contact the local authorities, it is unclear how the alerts would have reached residents or tourists with no system of sirens or alarms in place. Corpses covered in white sheets piled up at makeshift morgues, with several others including a six-month-old baby lying beneath the blazing sun in the popular tourist resort of Pangandaran.
Other important events
1812 Britain, by Treaty of Orebro, joins Sweden and Russia against France.
1872 Britain introduces voting by secret ballot.
1877 American inventor Thomas Edison invents the carbon telephone transmitter.
1923 British Matrimonial Causes Act gives women equality in divorce suits.
1932 Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands sign Unity treaty.
1934 British king George V opens the Mersey Tunnel, the longest underwater tunnel at the time.
1966 NASA launches its Gemini 10 manned spacecraft.
1969 John Fairfax of England becomes the first person to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean as he arrives in Fort Launderdale, Florida.
1972 Cairo orders Soviet Union to withdraw military advisers stationed in Egypt.
1980 India launches its first satellite, Rohini.
1988 Iran announces it has accepted a Security Council ceasefire call in its eight- year-old war with Iraq.
1991 Yugoslavia’s federal presidency decides to withdraw all troops from secessionist republic of Slovenia.
1993 Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resigns and dissolves Parliament.
1998 South African President Nelson Mandela celebrates his 80th birthday by marrying Graca Machel.
2000 Alex Salmond resigns as leader of the Scottish National Party.
2001 Workers bring much of Argentina’s business activity to a halt with a nationwide strike prompted by government spending cuts.
2002 A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is elected as Indian president.
2003 Dubai Government issues a decree setting up the Dubai Media Foundation.
2005 The first successful robot camel jockey race in the world is introduced in the UAE.
2007 An underground steam pipe explosion tears through a Manhattan street near Grand Central Terminal, killing one person.
2008 Qatar becomes the biggest investor in Barclays.
2010 An express train ploughs through a stationary train at a station in West Bengal, India, killing 61 people.
2012 Bollywood superstar Rajesh Khanna dies at the age of 69 in his home in Mumbai.
2013 Detriot filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in United States’ history.
