Today in History
August 7
1914 German army occupies city of Liege Belgium.
1926 The first British Grand Prix motor race is held at Brooklands in Surrey.
1941 Indian poet, writer and Nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore dies at the age of 80.
1944 The world’s first program-controlled calculator is presented to Harvard University in Boston.
1945 Soviet Union declares war on Japan seven days before Japanese surrender in the Second World War.
1957 An estimated 1,000 people are killed in Cali, Colombia, when a military truck convoy carrying dynamite and gasoline blows up.
1960 The Ivory Coast becomes independent of France.
1980 Thirteen people are executed for their alleged role in exiled premier Bakhtiar’s plot to overthrow Ayatollah Khomeini.
1986 Edward Lee Howard, a fugitive former CIA agent suspected of selling information, is granted political asylum in the Soviet Union.
1987 Lebanese former President Camille Chamoun, dies of heart attack.
1990 US send troops and warplanes to Saudi Arabia to protect against Iraq invasion.
1991 Croatian government accepts a federal peace plan in Yugoslavia and says it will not be first to break a ceasefire.
1996 Flash floods in Spain race through a Pyrenees Mountain camp jammed with hundreds of vacationers, at least 67 people die.
1998 Two car bombs tear into American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people.
2000 Dubai Airport Road underpass is opened to public.
2002 Alvaro Uribe is sworn in as president of Colombia.
2004 Nigel Roder beats six rivals by public acclaim to become England’s first official jester for more than 350 years.
2008 Syria authorities release Arif Dalila, an economist, after seven years in jail.
2010 UAE wins the Under 23 Gulf Cup football tournament against Kuwait, 1-0 in Doha.
2011 Capt Salem Al Mazroui is murdered in his home in Houston, Texas after two robbers forced their way into his house.
2013 A massive early morning fire destroys the arrival halls of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.
2014 Two Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, are sentenced to life after being found guilty of crimes against humanity.
2015 The American gunman James Holmes who stormed a Batman movie premiere and killed 12 cinemagoers sentences for life.
HIGHLIGHT
2002
First batch graduates from Tanmia
Twelve female students became the first batch to graduate from the Tanmia National Development Programme for Graduate Job Seekers, run in association with New Horizons Computer Learning Centres. The graduates, who all have university degrees, were honoured for completing the three months training course at a ceremony held at the centre premises, in Abu Dhabi. Nadeem Younis, the General Director of the centre, said: “The programme’s objective is to stimulate the trainees into acquiring knowledge that will qualify them for jobs requiring certain skills such as using different computer systems, communicating in English and carrying out various administrative jobs successfully.” Mohammad Ahmad Bu Qefel, the Acting Training Director at Tanmia, said the programme has a strategic role to play in training human resources in the UAE keeping in view the high standard it has set. He advised the graduates to join the private sector, saying: “Employment opportunities must be taken as they might be stepping stones to other jobs. Gaining experience in the private sector, in my view, is very important.”
