2002 - Two British explorers reached the North Pole to become the first all-woman team to trek to both Poles. After braving snowstorms and frostbite, Caroline Hamilton and Ann Daniels raised the British Union Jack in bright sunshine at the globe’s most northerly point. “We are ecstatic,” Daniels, a former banker, said. “It has been worth everything we have endured along the way.” Their 81-day journey across more than 640km of the world’s harshest terrain has been fraught with danger since they set off from Resolute Bay in the Canadian Arctic on March 12. The women each hauled their equipment on sledges weighing 114kg, twice their body weight. The pair said one of their first telephone calls after they reached the North Pole was to Britain’s Prince Charles.
Other important events
1866 - United States President Grover Cleveland marries Frances Folsom in a White House ceremony.
1896 - The world’s first patent for a radio communications device is filed in Britain by Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian-born inventor.
1910 - Charles Rolls becomes the first man to make a non-stop double crossing of the English Channel by plane.
1917 - Brazil declares war on Germany.
1946 - The Italian monarchy is abolished in favour of a republic.
1965 - Almost 200 miners are killed in a coal mine explosion near Fukuoka, Japan.
1966 - Nasa’s space probe Surveyor 1 lands on the Moon to collect data for the Apollo programme.
1974 - Jigme Singye Wangchuk is crowned King of Bhutan at age 18.
1979 - Pope John Paul II arrives in his native Poland on the first visit by a pope to a Communist country.
1987 - Paul Volcker steps down as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
1988 - Raj Kapoor, one of the greatest showmen of Indian cinema, dies.
1990 - British actor Sir Rex Harrison dies at the age of 82.
1995 - Yemen and Oman conclude the demarcation of their borders.
1998 - Discovery blasts into orbit from Cape Canaveral on Nasa’s last mission to ailing Russian space station Mir.
2008 - Shaikh Nasser Bin Zayed Al Nahyan and his colleague are killed in a helicopter crash over the Arabian Gulf waters.
2012 - Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is sentenced to life imprisonment along with his former interior minister Habib Al Adly for killing protesters.
2015 - Fifa president Sepp Blatter announces his resignation, five days after his re-election.
