2002 - Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel announced the resignation of his government after weeks of political uncertainty driven by a split in the far-right coalition partner, the Freedom Party. Schuessel called for early elections as his announcement came after three Freedom Party ministers stepped down in a power struggle with the influential Joerg Haider. Schuessel said he would meet the leaders of his conservative People’s Party to recommend that parliament be dissolved so that early elections could be held. The snap poll should come as soon as possible, “probably at the end of November, at the latest early December,” he said. The chancellor said his government will remain in place until new elections and that he would not reshuffle his team.
Other important events
1513 - Scotland’s King James IV is killed in Battle of Flooden with British.
1850 - California becomes 31st state of United States.
1867 - Luxembourg gains independence.
1888 - Chile annexes Easter Island in South Pacific.
1896 - Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen returns from his last Arctic expedition.
1943 - The Italian flagship Roma is sunk by the German Luftwaffe. Admiral Carlo Bergamini and 1,350 crew members are killed.
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.
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 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 aboard.
1991 - Tajikistan gains independence from the Soviet Union.
1996 - Typhoon Sally hits coastal areas of Guangdong, China’s most developed province, killing more than 130 people.
1999 - Israel gives Palestinian officials maps detailing the seven per cent of West Bank land that would be transferred to Palestinian civil control.
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 - The Dubai Metro’s Red line is inaugurated.
2012 - Verghese Kurien, the father of India’s milk revolution, dies in Gujarat.
