Tens of thousands of Palestinians welcomed Yasser Arafat home on the eve of a visit by US Secretary of State Warren Christopher and talks that could decide the fate of the battered Mideast peace effort. The crowd lined the road from the Egyptian border waving Palestinian flags as Arafat drove into the Gaza Strip from Egypt. It was an impressive show of support for Arafat as Palestinians head into talks with the Israelis which are widely seen as the last hope for rescuing the peace process. “We are not asking for the moon, we just want to see the implementation of their commitments, of what had been agreed upon, and what had been signed,” Arafat said at his headquarters in Gaza City. “We thank President Clinton [for] what he has done, and for his courageous step in this very sensitive period to protect the peace and to save the peace process.”
Other important events:
1796 Spain declares war on Britain.
1864 The city of Calcutta in India is flooded and almost totally destroyed by a cyclone, with more than 60,000 people killed.
1908 Ferdinand I declares Bulgaria’s independence from the Ottoman Empire.
1910 Portugal overthrows monarchy, proclaims republic.
1930 American pilot Laura Ingalls become the first woman to fly across North America, from New York to Glendale, California, in 30 hours, 27 minutes.
1944 Suffrage is extended to women in France.
1947 The first televised White House address is given by US President Harry Truman.
1962 The Beatles’ first hit, ‘Love Me Do’, is released in Britain.
1965 Pakistan severs diplomatic relations with Malaysia.
1970 Egypt’s only political party names Anwar Sadat to succeed late President Jamal Abdul Nasser.
1983 Lech Walesa, leader of Poland’s Solidarity labour movement, wins Nobel Peace Prize.
1984 Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.
1986 American Eugene Hasenfus is captured by Sandinista soldiers after the weapons plane he was in was shot down over southern Nicaragua.
1989 The Dalai Lama wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
1993 China breaks moratorium on nuclear testing.
1994 Forty-eight bodies are found in two locations in Switzerland after a cult’s mass suicide-murder.
1996 Seymour Cray, American electrical engineer and designer of supercomputers, dies.
1997 Sixteen schoolchildren and their driver are killed in Algeria when their bus is attacked by gunmen.
1999 At least 31 people are killed after two commuter trains collide in Britain’s worst rail crash in more than 10 years.
2000 The UAE joins the global anti-sanctions solidarity campaign by sending an Emirates Boeing aircraft to embargo-hit Baghdad.
2003 Akhmad Kadyrov becomes the first President of the Chechen Republic.
2009 A train derails during heavy rains near the coastal Thai city of Hua Hin, killing at least 10 people.
2011 Aakash, the world’s cheapest tablet, is launched in India.
2012 Michael Schumacher announces his retirement from Formula One for the second time and at the age of 43.
2015 Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell dies at the age of 67 in Gothenburg.
