1993 World number one Monica Seles was stabbed in the back by a spectator during a match in the Hamburg women’s tennis tournament. Police said she was not seriously injured, but was taken to hospital after being treated by medical attendants on the court. Seles, the 19-year-old Serbian-born player, screamed and held her right hand between her shoulder blades after the attacker knifed her while she was resting between games. She stumbled towards the net, was supported by an aide, but sat down on the court. She grimaced and covered her face with the left hand as blood spread across the back of her white tennis shirt. The attacker, a 38-year-old stocky German, balding and wearing a blue shirt, was in the front row and knifed her from behind He was pinned down after a scuffle. Oliver Wolde, a member of the German Tennis Federation, said the attacker stabbed a large knife into the back of Seles as she sat on her chair.
Other important events
1657 English fleet defeats Spanish fleet off Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
1789 George Washington becomes the first US president.
1803 US doubles in size with the purchases of the Louisiana Territory and New Orleans from France.
1824 Crete is captured by Egyptian allies of the Turks.
1881 France invades Tunisia from Algeria, and later establishes a protectorate.
1897 British physicist Joseph Thomson announces the discovery of electrons.
1900 Hawaii becomes a US territory.
1945 Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker with his new wife, Eva Braun.
1948 The Organisation of American States holds its first meeting in Bogota, Colombia.
1953 People’s Progressive Party wins first election in British Guyana.
1975 Vietnamese Communist troops take over Saigon, ending Vietnam War.
1979 Shaikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum is appointed as Prime Minister of the UAE.
1981 A hailstorm with winds reaching 67 knots left a trail of destruction in and around the UAE.
1986 Indian troops storm Golden Temple complex in Amritsar, Punjab.
1990 American hostage Frank Reed is freed after four years in the hands of pro-Iranian kidnappers in Lebanon.
1993 Cern, the creators of the World Wide Web, announces that it could be used for free by anyone.
1994 Austrian Roland Ratzenberger dies after a high-speed crash during final qualifying for the San Marino Grand Prix.
1998 A noted Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani dies at his London home, at the age of 75.
2004 Ten countries join European Union, the biggest expansion in its 47-year history.
2007 A gasoline tanker crashes and bursts into flames near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in California.
2009 Qatari Minister of Commerce Shaikh Fahd Bin Jasem Bin Mohammad Al Thani dies in a car accident.
2012 A double-decker ferry with more than 350 passengers sinks in the Brahmaputra river in Assam, India, killing at least 270 people.
2013 Prince Willem-Alexander crowned new king of The Netherlands, becomes the first male monarch in the country in 123 years.
2014 British actor Bob Hoskins dies after a bout of pneumonia, he was 71.
2015 Stand By Me singer Ben E.King dies at 76.
2017 Dubai government launches ‘Dubai Font’, the first typeface developed by Microsoft for a city.
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