1987 - French playwright Jean Anouilh, who became one of the most controversial and versatile dramatists in Europe by portraying the human condition with scorn and compassion, died in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was 77. Anouilh, known for plays such as Eurydke and Antigone in which he reinterpreted Greek myths, died of a heart attack after two days in hospital. Anouilh moved to Lausanne in 1947, had been ill for some time. Anouilh’s works, mixing dream and reality, have won worldwide popularity. A writer with an acute feeling for dialogue in the tradition of French classics, he was in his last years the most frequently performed playwright in France. His wartime masterpiece Antigone produced in 1944 with bombs whistling outside, was seen as an example to the French resistance to the German Nazi occupation. Yet in later years he was accused of pessimistic, rightwing anarchism. He was deeply disappointed by the events in France after the liberation, in 1944, seeing widespread cowardice and a spirit of revenge and hatred.
Other important events
1866 - Italy and Austria sign a peace treaty. Austria surrenders Venice and the surrounding region to Italy.
1922 - Rebecca L. Felton, a Democrat from Georgia, is the first woman elected to the US Senate.
1929 - Name of Serbo-Croat-Slovene Kingdom is changed to Yugoslavia.
1932 - Iraq joins League of Nations as British mandate ends.
1952 - Britain conducts its first atomic bomb test off the coast of Australia.
1954 - Foreign ministers of seven West European nations, US and Canada agree to allow West Germany to join the Nato.
1963 - The Honduran armed forces oust Ramon Villeda Morales as president in a violent coup d’etat.
1968 - Leftist military coup in Peru ousts President Fernando Balaunde Terry.
1973 - Willi Stoph becomes the leader of East Germany.
1981 - Ali Khamenei wins Iran’s presidential elections by a landslide.
1988 - Indian hostage Mithileshwar Singh is freed in Beirut after 20 months and 10 days’ captivity.
1990 - East and West Germany merge to become Germany.
1993 - At least 12 US Army soldiers are killed in Mogadishu, Somalia, in a 15-hour battle with supporters of Somali warlord General Mohammad Farah Aidid.
1994 - Jordan and Israel sign peace agreement.
1995 - Former US football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.
1996 - US, Britain, China, France and Russia sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
1998 - 10,000 Turkish soldiers cross into northern Iraq to attack Kurdish rebels.
2003 - Pakistan test-fires nuclear capable Hatf-III missile.
2005 - India, Pakistan sign pact on missile tests.
2006 - Europe’s first lunar mission crash lands on moon.
2007 - About 3,000 miners are trapped underground when a water pipe bursts, probably causing a shaft to collapse in a South African gold mine.
2008-= OJ Simpson is found guilty of armed robbery and kidnapping.
2013 - Former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav sentenced to spend five years in jail in the fodder scam case.
2014 - Nine United Nations peacekeepers from Niger are killed in northeastern Mali.
2015 - Former British Defence Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Healey dies at the age of 98.
2016 - World heavyweight champion boxer Tyson Fury announces retirement.
