July 18, 1980: Assassination attempt on Bakhtiar fails

Assassination attempt on Bakhtiar fails

1980 - Gunmen posing as journalists tried to assassinate former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar, killing a police guard and a woman neighbour. Police said the three raiders bluffed their way past police to reach the second-floor landing of the apartment block and pumped automatic-pistol fire into Bakhtiar’s flat before an armoured door was slammed shut. Bakhtiar, the deposed Shah’s last prime minister, was accused earlier in the week of being linked with a coup attempt in Iran. The exiled politician said, he had been receiving death threats almost daily. Asked whether he feared death squads might strike again, Bakhtiar, 63, said: “With irresponsible people heading a government, gangsters are trained and sent pretty well everywhere.”

July 18

1872 - Britain introduces voting by secret ballot.

1877 - American inventor Thomas Edison invents the carbon telephone transmitter.

1923 - British Matrimonial Causes Act gives women equality in divorce suits.

1934 - British king George V opens the Mersey Tunnel, the longest underwater tunnel at the time.

1972 - Cairo orders Soviet Union to withdraw military advisers stationed in Egypt.

1980 - India launches its first satellite, Rohini.

1988 - Iran announces it has accepted a Security Council ceasefire call in its eight- year-old war with Iraq.

1993 - Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resigns and dissolves parliament.

1996 - A TWA jumbo jet explodes over the Atlantic shortly after takeoff, killing 228 people aboard.

1998 - South African President Nelson Mandela celebrates his 80th birthday by marrying Graca Machel.

2000 - Alex Salmond resigns as leader of Scottish National Party.

2002 - Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is elected as Indian President.

2003 - Dubai Government issues a decree, setting up the Dubai Media Foundation.

2005 - The first successful robot camel jockey race in the world is introduced in the UAE.

2008 - Qatar becomes the biggest investor in Barclays.

2010 - An express train ploughs through a stationary train at a station in West Bengal, India, killing 61 people.

2012 - Bollywood superstar Rajesh Khanna dies at the age of 69 in his home in Mumbai.

2013 - Detroit files the largest municipal bankruptcy in United States’ history.