Sepmber 20, 1996: Whitaker retains boxing crown

Whitaker retains boxing crown

1996 - Pernell Whitaker got it right the second time around. Five months after edging Wilfredo Rivera in a questionable split decision verdict to hold onto his World Boxing Council welterweight title, Whitaker scored a clear unanimous 12-round victory in the rematch. Whitaker, a world champion six times in four different weight classes, silenced a crowd waving Puerto Rican flags in support of Rivera by landing a barrage of lefts that bloodied the challenger under both eyes. The American champion also scored a knockdown in the key sixth round in which Rivera had a point deducted for a low blow. Judge Mazakazu Uchida of Japan scored it 115-113, Briton John Keane saw it 115-111 and Jay Kassees of the United States had it 113-112 for the champion.

September 20

1870 - Italian troops enter Rome, completing the unification of Italy.

1881 - Chester A. Arthur is sworn in as the 21st president of the US, succeeding James A. Garfield.

1946 - The first annual Cannes Film Festival opens.

1955 - The USSR grants sovereignty to East Germany.

1967 - Benin separates from Nigeria.

1977 - Vietnam is admitted as 149th member of United Nations.

1981 - Belize declares independence.

1984 - A suicide car bomber attacks the US Embassy annexe in north Beirut, killing a dozen people.

1989 - F. W. de Klerk inaugurated as President of South Africa.

1991 - Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev admits the central government has lost most of its political control over Soviet republics.

1992 - French vote in favour of Maastricht treaty.

1994 - A pneumonic plague epidemic breaks out in Surat, India, killing about 60 people.

1996 - Murtaza Bhutto, the estranged brother of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, is killed in a gun battle in Karachi.

1998 - Malaysian police arrests ousted deputy premier Anwar Ebrahim.

1999 - Kosovo Liberation Army leaders and the Nato-led peacekeeping force sign an agreement to demilitarise the former rebel army.

2001 - US President George W. Bush declares a ‘war on terror’ in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

2004 - Thousands of Vietnamese troops pull out of the northern Cambodian town of Siem Reap at the start of Hanoi’s final withdrawal.

2008 - Czech ambassador and 53 others killed when a suicide attacker bombs the Marriott hotel in Islamabad.

2010 - A freight train smashes into a passenger train, killing 20 in Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh, India.

2011 - Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani is killed by a suicide bomber at his home in Kabul.

2013 - More than 100 people are killed in landslides and flooding caused by heavy rain in Acapulco, Mexico.

2014 - New Zealand’s conservative Prime Minister John Key sweeps to a historic election victory.

2015 - British author Jackie Collins dies of breast cancer at 77.