1997- Kolkata, the ‘city of joy’, was plunged into grief and despair as it bid a final farewell to Mother Teresa. The 87-year-old founder of Missionaries of Charity was given a state funeral with full military honours at the Netaji Indoor Stadium before being buried at the mission’s Mother House. Nearly half a million mourners waited for hours behind rough wooden barricades all along the rain-drenched route of the funeral procession for a glimpse of her body. After a week of lying in state before queens and lepers, presidents and the poor, Mother Teresa’s body returned to her family of nuns who stood near as her casket entered the grave in what had been the order’s cafeteria. Mother Teresa’s gnarled hands were clasped around a wooden rosary.
Other important events
1759 - After a two-month siege of Quebec, British forces scale the Plains of Abraham to engage and defeat the French.
1788 - The first US national election is authorized.
1918 - Train accident at Weesp, the Netherlands, kills 42.
1923 - Miguel Primo de Rivera becomes Prime Minister of Spain in a military coup.
1933 - Elizabeth McCombs becomes the first woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament.
1943 - Chiang Kai-shek becomes president of China.
1948 - Republican Margaret Chase Smith is elected to the US Senate, becoming the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress.
1979 - An underwater earthquake in Indonesia causes tidal waves that destroy an entire village and kill more than 100 people.
1988 - A DC-10 vacation flight bound for New York with 393 people aboard crashes and catches fire on takeoff at Malaga Airport, Spain.
1989 - Desmond Tutu leads biggest anti-apartheid protest march in South Africa.
1991 - The US and the Soviet Union agree to discontinue their military aid to government and rebel forces in Afghanistan.
1993 - Palestine and Israel sign a peace accord in Oslo, providing for mutual recognition and Palestinian control over Gaza and the West Bank.
1995 - A military transport aircraft crashes into the sea off the coast of western Sri Lanka, killing all 75 people on board.
1997 - British singer Elton John releases Candle in the Wind 1997 as a tribute to Princess Diana.
1998 - The Yugoslav republic of Montenegro deports thousands of Kosovo refugees to Albania.
1999 - Blast in Russia destroys an apartment building in Moscow and kills 118 people.
2007 - Three powerful earthquakes jolt Indonesia, sending a 10-foot tsunami crashing to shore. At least 10 people are killed.
2008 - A series of bombs rocks New Delhi, India and kills more than 30 people.
2013 - Indian court sentences four men to death for the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old medical student on a moving Delhi bus.
