2001 - Belarus’ central election committee reported a high turnout in presidential elections, which incumbent Alexander Lukashenko is tipped to win. Midway through, 57 per cent of the voters in Belarus had cast their ballots, committee secretary Nikolai Lozovik said. The election is considered validated when turnout rises above 50 per cent. “There have not been any major complaints on the handling of the vote,” Lozovik said. The committee chairwoman Lidia Ermochina said the number of voters who cast their ballots in advance had also been high, at 14.3 per cent. Belarus’ system of advance voting, which allows people to cast ballots during the five days running up to the poll, has been heavily criticised by observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Other important events
1850 - California becomes the 31st state of the United States.
1867 - Luxembourg gains independence.
1888 - Chile annexes Easter Island in the South Pacific.
1896 - Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen returns from his last Arctic expedition.
1921 - Constitution of Central American Union is signed by republics of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
1948 - The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) is established.
1951 - Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru becomes president of the governing Congress party.
1956 - American rock singer Elvis Presley makes his first television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
1965 - Tibet is made an autonomous region of China.
1976 - Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong dies.
1979 - Unidentified attackers massacre 46 Kurdish villagers at the height of the anti-government rebellion in Kurdistan.
1987 - Iraq launches a series of coordinated air raids on Iranian power plants, factories and oil centres.
1988 - A Vietnamese jetliner trying to land in heavy rain crashes and explodes in a rice field near Bangkok airport, killing 75 people onboard.
1999 - Israel releases Palestinian officials maps, detailing the seven per cent of West Bank land that would be transferred to Palestinian civil control.
2004 - A car bomb explodes outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, killing nine people.
2005 - President Hosni Mubarak is officially declared the victor of Egypt’s first contested presidential elections.
2006 - UAE team takes skeet gold at Asian Shooting Championship in Singapore.
2008 - Asif Ali Zardari takes office as Pakistan’s President.
2009 - Dubai Metro’s Red Line is inaugurated.
2012 - Verghese Kurien, the father of India’s milk revolution, dies in Gujarat.
