Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke won an historic third term in general election and pledged to lead a united Australia to renewed prosperity. Hawke, 57, who called the election eight months before his three-year term ended, said that his Labour Party government would continue its economic policies, the main target of opposition attack. “This will be a government for all Australians ... Things which unite Australians are more important to us than those which divide us,” Hawke said in an apparent reference to the bitter five-week election campaign. Opposition leader John Howard conceded defeat and said: “It is quite clear the Hawke Government has been returned. I would like to congratulate the government and the prime minister and wish them well.” The electoral commission said after half the 10.5 million ballots were counted, that Labour had won 56 seats, the Liberals 31 and the National Party 17.
Other important events
1810 - Napoleonic Empire annexes Holland.
1859 - Westminster’s Big Ben rings for the first time in London.
1921 - Mongolia gains independence from China.
1936 - The Triborough Bridge opens to traffic in New York City.
1950 - Pakistan joins the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
1960 - Premier Moise Tshombe of Katanga, now part of Congo, proclaims independence.
1962 - American scuba-diver Fred Baldasare becomes the first person to swim the English Channel underwater.
1974 - More than 6,000 life-sized terra-cotta figures of warriors are unearthed by Chinese archaeologists near the ancient Chinese capital of Xian.
1978 - Truck carrying industrial gas explodes and sets fire to campsite on Mediterranean coast in Spain, killing at least 180 people.
1979 - Skylab falls to earth after six years in orbit.
1987 - Iraq launches attack on an Iranian foothold in southern Iraq’s Majnoon oilfield during Iran-Iraq war.
1993 - Military rulers and opposition leaders agree to hold presidential elections in Togo.
1994 - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat heads to Gaza, ending his 12-year exile in Tunisia.
1995 - US establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam.
1997 - Fire sweeps through a hotel in the Thai beach resort of Pattaya, killing at least 79 people.
1999 - A heat wave and a violent storm converge on central and eastern Europe killing more than a dozen people.
2000 - Bashar Al Assad is elected as president of Syria.
2002 - South Korean President Kim Dae-jung appoints the country’s first female Prime Minister, Chang Sang.
2003 - Bus services restart between Lahore and New Delhi.
2006 - Eight bombs hit Mumbai’s commuter rail network during rush hour in the financial hub of India, killing at least 200 people.
2007 - Pakistani troops storm Islamabad’s radical Red Mosque. Some 102 people die.
2009 - Former Canadian boxing champion Arturo Gatti is found dead in a Brazilian hotel room.
2010 - Bomb attacks rip through crowds watching the World Cup final in Kampala, Uganda, killing 74 people.
2011 - 128 are feared dead when a tourist boat sinks in the Volga River in Russia.
2012 - Virgin Galactic announces “LauncherOne”, a new air-launched rocket specifically designed to deliver small satellites into orbit.
2015 - Mexico’s top drug lord Joaquin Guzman escapes for a second time from a maximum-security prison.
