1997 Italy’s 17-month-old government led by Prime Minister Romano Prodi quit after failing to persuade its erstwhile Marxist allies into backing a deficit-cutting budget for 1998. Following a dramatic budget debate in the Lower House Chamber of Deputies, Prodi tendered the resignation of his centre-left government to President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who asked his administration to stay on in a caretaker capacity. Scalfaro, intent on avoiding protracted political deadlock, wasted no time in announcing immediate consultations with party leaders, parliamentary speakers and former heads-of-state to try to seek a new government formation and avert early elections three-and-a-half years ahead of schedule. Prodi, who headed Italy’s first administration led by the left since Second World War, went straight from his meeting with Scalfaro for talks with the party chiefs of his Olive Tree alliance, who made up the outgoing coalition.
Other important events
1801 Turkey formally recovers Egypt by treaty with France.
1888 The Washington Monument is opened in Washington DC.
1933 Diego Martínez Barrio becomes Prime Minister of Spain
1934 King Aleksander I of Yugoslavia and French Foreign Minister Jean Louis Barthou are assassinated in Marseilles, France.
1941 Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia becomes President of Panama in a coup.
1958 Pope Pius XII dies, 19 years after he was elevated to the papacy.
1963 Mutesa II, ruler of Buganda, becomes the first President of Uganda.
1967 Latin American guerrilla leader Che Guevara is executed in Bolivia.
1971 Army rebels in Argentina surrender after a 19-hour attempt to overthrow the government.
1975 IRA explodes a bomb near the Ritz Hotel, Piccadilly, 1 person killed.
1979 Former Afghanistan president Noor Mohammad Taraki dies at the age of 62.
1983 A powerful bomb explodes in Yangon, Myanmar, killing 18 members of South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan’s entourage.
1984 Soviet Union and North Yemen sign 20-year treaty of friendship and cooperation.
1985 The hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise liner surrender after the ship arrives in Port Said, Egypt.
1988 A violent uprising against escalating prices and government-ordered austerity has left at least 200 people dead across Algeria.
1990 Forty-seven people are killed in India when a train car is set afire by terrorists protesting an injunction against an affirmative-action plan.
1991 The first phase of Dubai Marina project is completed.
1995 An earthquake hits Jalisco and Colima states in western Mexico, killing 48 people and injuring more than 100.
1997 Italy’s 17-month-old government led by Prime Minister Romano Prodi quit.
1999 German General Klaus Reinhardt takes over as the leader of the peacekeeping troops in Kosovo.
2010 Tom Donilon is appointed as US national security adviser.
2011 Sebastian Vettel becomes the youngest driver to win the Formula One World Championship twice.
2012 Pakistani schoolgirl education activist Malala Yousufzai is shot in the head in an assassination attempt on a school bus in Swat.
2013 The Shweihat 2 power plant with a daily capacity of 1,500 megawatts is inaugurated at Al Ruwais, Abu Dhabi.
2014 Palestinian unity government of Hamas and Fatah held its first meeting in Gaza Strip.
