Major earthquake strikes Iran
1997 - A powerful earthquake devastated eastern Iran, killing more than 2,400 people and injuring 5,000, flattening 80 villages and damaging scores of others. The quake, measuring 7.1 degrees on the Richter scale, hit the towns of Birjand and Ghaen and surrounding villages in Khorassan province along the Afghan border. The head of Iran’s Natural Disaster Organisation in Khorassan province, Mehdi Siadati, said that the towns of Birjand and Ghaen had both suffered “heavy damage.” Ghaen’s governor, Mojtaba Sadeghian, appealed for ambulances and medical aid to be sent to the quake-stricken areas around his town, which is around 100km north of Birjand in southern Khorassan. A Ghaen official said that 80 villages in the area were completely flattened and 70 others suffered at least 60 per cent damage.
May 10
1796 - Napoleon defeats Austria in Battle of Lodi Bridge.
1940 - Winston Churchill forms new British government after prime minister Neville Chamberlain resigns.
1940 - Germany invades Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium.
1957 - Soviets appeal to US and Britain to halt nuclear tests.
1972 - South Vietnam’s President Nguyen van Thieu declares state of martial law.
1981 - Francois Mitterrand is elected president of France.
1990 - India’s worst cyclone in 10 years kills 85 people and floods 90 villages.
1991 - UN peacekeepers formally declare the Iraq-Kuwait border a demilitarised zone.
1993 - Fire claims more than 200 lives in a toy factory in Bangkok, Thailand.
1994 - Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa’s first black president.
2003 - Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Al Hakim, Iraq’s top Shiite leader, returns after 23 years in exile.
2005 - Egypt’s parliament passes a constitutional amendment allowing multi-candidate presidential elections for the first time.
2009 - A relentless hail of artillery fire in Sri Lanka’s war zone kills at least 378 civilians, including more than 100 children.
2010 - A suicide bomber blows himself up in a crowd in southern city of Iraq and gunmen fire on security checkpoints in attacks that claim nearly 100 lives.
2014 - Thirteen workers are killed and 15 are injured when the bus they are travelling in hits a stationary truck on Emirates Road.
2016 - Ali Haidar Gilani, kidnapped son of former Pakistan prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, is freed after three years in captivity in Afghanistan.
