1982 - Hundreds of defenceless Palestinian men, women and children were massacred in the twin Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila by Israel’s Lebanese right-wing allies. While Israeli soldiers manned positions overlooking the camps, it was apparent that the rightists allowed entry by the enemy troops, methodically rounded up and killed...everyone they could find. Israeli bulldozers moved along the narrow dirt roads of the camps, smashing the refugees’ houses and piling rubble and dirt atop the bodies in an apparent effort to hide the corpses. Israeli troops had besieged the whole area. Army sources reported Israeli troops fired flares into the sky from their positions next to the Shatila camp at a time when several people in the area reported hearing shooting.
Other important events
1844 - Inventor Thomas Adams of Philadelphia patents the first US colour printing press.
1871 - The eight-mile Mont-Cenis Tunnel opens in the Alps, linking Savoy with the rest of Italy via a 20-minute train ride.
1935 - Manuel Quezon is elected first president of the Philippine Commonwealth.
1939 - Finnish athlete Taisto Mäki becomes the first man to run the 10,000 metres in under 30 minutes.
1944 - The Battle of Arnhem begins with an Allied airborne landing in the Netherlands.
1947 - James Forrestal becomes the first United States Secretary of Defence.
1949 - Fire destroys Noronic, the largest passenger steamer on Great Lakes in Canada, killing more than 130 people.
1957 - Malaysia joins the United Nations.
1963 - Malaysia breaks off diplomatic relations with Indonesia.
1967 - A riot during a football match in Turkey kills 42 people and injures 600.
1976 - The first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, is unveiled by Nasa.
1978 - Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign an agreement for Middle East peace.
1993 - The body of General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the premier of Poland’s government-in-exile and commander of the Polish free forces during the Second World War, is reburied in Krakow.
1993 - Muslim and Croat army chiefs agree on a ceasefire in south and central Bosnia.
2000 - Television personality Paula Yates is found dead in her London home.
2004 - Mexico’s President Vincente Fox and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi sign a free trade agreement.
2008 - An assault on the US Embassy in Sana’a, Yemen, kills 19 people.
2012 - American woman Sunita Williams takes command of the International Space Station.
2015 - At least 85 are killed in a South Sudan oil tanker explosion.
2016 - Norwegian hostage Kjartan Sekkingstad is freed by the Abu Sayyaf group in Philippines after a year in captivity.
