1996 - Afghanistan’s embattled President Burhanuddin Rabbani and his one-time foe Gulbuddin Hekmatyar signed a peace agreement, but the Taliban militia besieging the capital Kabul immediately rejected the pact. The six-point agreement signed in Kabul committed Rabbani and Hekmatyar, a former prime minister, to work for peace in the war-shattered country, set up an interim government acceptable to all factions and hold elections. The peace accord also called for establishing an Islamic system in the country, defending national unity and setting up an Islamic army.
Rabbani’s top military commander, Ahmad Shah Masoud, and another major ally, Ittehad-i-Islami party leader Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf, attended the signing ceremony.
Other important events
1844 - Samuel F.B. Morse transmits a message from Washington to Baltimore as he formally opens America’s first telegraph line.
1883 - The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is opened after 14 years of construction.
1890 - American George Francis Train becomes fastest person to travel around the world, taking 67 days.
1900 - Britain annexes the Orange Free State.
1935 - Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark marries Princess Ingrid of Sweden.
1964 - Riot erupts at a football match in Lima, Peru, and 300 spectators are killed.
1976 - Britain and France open a trans-Atlantic Concorde service to Washington.
1981 - Ecuador’s President Jaime Roldos Aguilera is killed in a plane crash in the Andes.
1982 - UAE breaks diplomatic relations with Zaire following its decision to resume diplomatic ties with Israel.
1983 - Fred Sinowatz becomes Chancellor of Austria.
1991 - Eritrea declares its independence from Ethiopia.
1992 - Thomas Klestil is elected Austria’s tenth President in a landslide vote.
1995 - Britain’s Labour Party leader Harold Wilson dies after a long illness at the age of 79.
1997 - Iran’s moderate former culture minister Mohammad Khatami is elected president.
1998 - First multiparty vote in a region ruled by China’s Communists is held in Hong Kong. Pro-democracy parties win most of the legislature seats that were up for vote.
2000 - Israel ends its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon.
2001 - Temba Tsheri becomes the youngest person to climb Mount Everest.
2002 - US and Russia sign a nuclear arms reduction treaty in Moscow.
2009 - A trilateral summit in Tehran is attended by the Presidents of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan to fight terrorism and drug trafficking.
2014 - Real Madrid wins a record 10th European League title.
2015 - Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash, 86, and his wife are killed in a car accident in New Jersey.
