1997 - Poland’s Solidarity bloc clinched a draft coalition deal with the smaller Freedom Union and the president named Solidarity’s Jerzy Buzek, 57, as prime minister of a new centre-right cabinet. “I have signed the decision on designating Professor Jerzy Buzek for prime minister. I am convinced he is the right person because of his competence and ability to form a cabinet,” President Aleksander Kwasniewski declared. The appointment followed an agreement struck between the leaders of the two parties minutes before Buzek’s scheduled meeting with Kwasniewski. “We will now get down to forming a government. I hope the time for forming the government will be shorter than the 14 days set out in the constitution,” Buzek said. Kwasniewski said he shared with Buzek views on key goals of the future government. The coalition will have a clear majority as Solidarity won 201 of parliament’s 460 lower house seats and the Freedom Union took 60.
Other important events
1912 - Turkey declares war on Bulgaria and Serbia.
1913 - Serbs invade Albania.
1918 - Republic of Yugoslavia is formally established.
1933 - Albert Einstein arrives in the United States as a refugee from Nazi Germany.
1945 - Colonel Juan Peron stages coup in Buenos Aires and becomes absolute dictator of Argentina.
1953 - France agrees to withdraw all its occupation forces from Austria.
1957 - French author Albert Camus is awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.
1966 - Central Peru is shaken by an earthquake, which kills 92 people.
1979 - Mother Teresa wins Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the destitute in Calcutta, India.
1989 - Loma Prieta earthquake strikes San Francisco, California, 273 people are killed and 650 injured.
1991 - At least 16 people are killed when the night express from Nice to Paris smashes into a goods train at Melun.
1994 - Jordan and Israel sign a historic peace treaty in Amman.
1995 - Algerian terrorists bomb a subway train in Paris, injuring 29.
1997 - Kjell Magne Bondevik named Prime Minister of Norway.
1998 - A pipeline explodes in Nigeria when villagers try to siphon off oil. At least 700 die.
1998 - Former governor of Sindh province, Hakim Mohammad Saeed, is assassinated in Karachi.
2000 - Dubai Marina gets first taste of water.
2000 - A high-speed passenger train traveling from London to Leeds derails in the commuter belt north of the British capital, killing four and injuring 34.
2001 - Israel’s tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi is shot dead in the first-ever assassination of a serving cabinet minister.
2003 - Carlos Mesa becomes President of Bolivia.
2005 - China celebrates the successful landing of the country’s second manned space flight as a boost to its status as a space power.
2006 - Bahrain’s Latifa Al Gaood becomes the first woman in the Gulf to win a parliamentary general election.
2010 - Farah Saeed becomes the first female Emirati to join Etihad as a cabin crew member.
2012 - Etihad Airways signs a codeshare agreement with Garuda Indonesia.
2014 - India successfully test-fires its first domestically built nuclear-capable long-range cruise missile Nirbhay.
2016 - At least 30 people are killed as two buses collide at Khanpur in Pakistan’s southern Pun-jab province.
