Tim Witherspoon retained his World Heavyweight Boxing Championship when he turned the tables on big-hitting Briton Frank Bruno. The 28-year-old American unleashed a colossal right hand punch to send Bruno reeling and then followed up with another powerful flurry to stop his opponent in the 11th round of their scheduled 15-round bout and retain his World Boxing Association (WBA) title. Before the referee could conclude the ten count Bruno’s corner men had flung in the white towel of surrender and the referee confirmed later he had stopped the fight. It was Witherspoon’s first defence of the crown he won from compatriot Tony Tubbs and it was his 25th win in 27 professional fights. Bruno, the 24-year-old Londoner, had been widely fancied to use his sledgehammer right-hand punch to prize the title away from Witherspoon. For ten rounds, he seemed set to fulfil his promise. But then the American caught him with a right cross and followed up with a barrage of lefts and rights to the head to drop Bruno on the seat of his pants in the corner.
Other important events:
1864 Nanking, the capital of the Taiping rebellion in China, falls to government troops who proceed to slaughter 100,000 people.
1870 France declares war on Prussia, opening Franco-Prussian War.
1877 In the first Wimbledon Tennis Championship men’s final, Spencer W. Gore beats W.C. Marshall.
1900 The first line of the Paris Metro opens for operation.
1939 American physician Roy P. Scholz of St Louis, Missouri, becomes first surgeon to use fibreglass sutures.
1940 The British Army’s Intelligence Corps is founded.
1947 The prime minister of the shadow Burmese government, Bogyoke Aung San, and six of his cabinet and two non-cabinet members, are assassinated.
1966 Frank Sinatra, 50, marries 20-year old actess Mia Farrow.
1975 US and Soviet astronauts and cosmonauts end their two-day linkup in space.
1979 Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinistas claim revolutionary victory.
1980 Former Turkish prime minister Nihat Erim is assassinated in Istanbul.
1985 Nearly 300 people die after a dam bursts in northern Italy, sweeping away three hotels and several homes.
1991 Kurds protesting Iraqi rule fight government soldiers in first major clashes since withdrawal of allied forces.
1994 An emotional farewell to North Korean leader Kim Il-sung.
1996 Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadžic resigns after being indicted for war crimes.
1998 Saeed Al Tayer and Felix Serralles escapes with serious injury when their powerboat 5 explodes and burst into flames within sight of the finish line at the Norwegian Grand Prix in Arendal.
2001 British politician and best-selling novelist Jeffrey Archer is jailed for four years for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
2004 Iraq appoints 43 new ambassadors in its first move to re-engage with the world after regaining sovereignty from the US.
2005 Insurgents set off a bomb near a police minibus in Chechnya, killing 14 people.
2006 A cruise liner carrying more than 1,000 Americans sails out of Beirut’s port in the first mass US evacuation from Lebanon.
2007 Twenty-three South Korean Christian aid workers are taken hostage in Afghanistan.
2008 Pope Benedict XVI apologises for the first time for years of abuse of minors by the Catholic clergy.
2012 Former Egyptian vice-president Omar Sulaiman dies in US hospital at the age of 77.
