July 26
1847 Liberia declares its independence.
1865 Patrick Francis Healy becomes the first African American to earn a PhD.
1891 France annexes South Sea island of Tahiti.
1892 Dadabhai Naoroji becomes Britain’s first Asian Member of Parliament
1908 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is born in US.
1920 The 19th Amendment to the American Constitution is ratified, granting women the right to vote.
1945 Winston Churchill resigns as Britain’s Prime Minister, following his party’s electoral defeat.
1947 The US Department of Defence is established under the Armed Forces Unification Act.
1952 Eva Perón, First Lady of Argentina, dies.
1953 Fidel Castro leads an attack on army barracks in Santiago, Cuba, in the hope of sparking a popular uprising.
1956 Egypt nationalises the Suez Canal.
1965 The Republic of Maldives gains independence from Britain.
1971 Apollo 15 is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, for a fourth lunar landing and the debut of the lunar rover.
1974 Konstantinos Karamanlis, new Greek premier, forms civilian Cabinet after seven years of military rule in Greece.
1984 David Lange is sworn in as Prime Minister of New Zealand.
1986 American hostage Lawrence Jenco is freed in Lebanon after 18 months’ captivity.
1997 Sri Lanka wins Asia Cup after beating India by eight wickets in the final.
1998 Prime Minister Hun Sen’s party wins a majority in Cambodia elections.
2001 Indonesia’s ousted President Abdul Rahman Wahid vacates the palace and leaves the country.
2003 Three powerful earthquake strikes northern Japan and at least 421 people are injured.
2008 More than 55 are killed and many injured when 16 bomb blasts hit Ahmedabad, India.
2009 India’s first nuclear submarine is unveiled to the public.
2010 A suspected Al Qaida suicide bomber blows up a car by the Baghdad office of Al Arabiya television, killing four people.
2011 All 80 passengers of a military plane are killed after it crashes on a mountain in southern Morocco.
2013 57 people are killed in twin bomb explosions in a busy market in north-west Pakistan.
2015 American singer and actress Bobbi Kristina Brown dies at a hospice in Duluth, Georgia.
2016 Solar Impulse 2 lands in Abu Dhabi after creating history by circumnavigating the globe without using a drop of fossil fuel.
HIGHLIGHT
1997
Nine die in air show crash
Nine people died and 37 were injured, some of them children, when a light plane crashed near a Red Cross tent during an air show in the Belgian coastal resort of Ostend. The plane, a single-engine XT300, plunged into the tarmac after the pilot lost control during a loop which was part of an aerobatic display, raining debris onto the crowd and spraying spectators with burning kerosene. The Jordanian pilot, Captain Amr Hani Bilal, was among the dead. Belgian Interior Minister Johan Vande Lanotte said the pilot appeared to have lost control of his plane. “It is too early to say what exactly happened. We are now concentrating on helping and identifying the victims.” An Ostend police officer said that two or three children were apparently among the victims. Those seriously injured were airlifted to nearby hospitals from Ostend airport, which was sealed off after the crash. Traffic around the regional airport was chaotic with fleets of ambulances arriving and spectators trying to get away.
