1984: Former Finance Minister John Turner, who quit Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s cabinet nine years ago, was chosen to succeed Trudeau as prime minister. Turner swamped two other candidates on the second ballot by delegates to a Liberal Party convention, getting 1.862 votes to 1,368 for Energy Minister Jean Chretien and 192 for Economic Development Minister Donald Johnston.
The new party leader will take over as prime minister once Trudeau makes his resignation official. Turner said his supporters formed “a new coalition of Canadians forging a new brand of liberalism.” He said his government’s top priority would be “the creation of jobs, the creation of growth, the creation of confidence.” Turner will be able to take over the government as prime minister even though he is not a member of parliament, but he will be expected to seek a seat in the House of Commons soon, either by arranging a special election in a convenient district or by calling national elections.
Other important events
1671 Rebel Cossack leader Stenka Razin is executed by quartering in Moscow’s Red Square.
1779 Spain declares war on Britain, and begins a four-year siege of Gibraltar.
1884 The first roller coaster in America opens at Coney Island, Brooklyn.
1917 The first All-Russian Congress of the Soviets is convened.
1920 The Council of League of Nations holds its first public meeting in London.
1958 Imre Nagy, former prime minister of Hungary, is executed in Budapest.
1963 The first woman space traveller, Valentina Tereshkova, is launched into orbit.
1976 Bloody rioting erupts in Soweto, South Africa.
1977 Leonid Brezhnev becomes president of the USSR.
1979 Ignatius Acheampong, Ghana’s former head of state, is executed.
1983 Yuri Andropov is elected President of the Soviet Union.
1992 US and Russia agree to slash their arsenals of long-range nuclear weapons by two-thirds.
1997 The Irish Republican Army kills two police officers in Northern Ireland.
1998 Afghanistan’s Taliban religious army orders the closing of more than 100 private schools that had been educating girls.
2001 US President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin meet for the first time in Slovenia.
2003 Emirates awards Airbus and Boeing the biggest orders in global aviation history, valued at $19 billion for 71 aircraft.
2004 Twenty people are killed and around 100 injured when a passenger train plunges off a bridge in western India after hitting a boulder.
2006 The leader of Nepal’s Maoist rebels announces a landmark agreement to make his followers part of the government for the first time.
2008 Migrant boat sinks off Libya, leaving 40 dead and more than 100 missing.
2010 Flash floods kill at least 22 people in south-eastern France.
2012 Saudi Crown Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz dies at the age of 79.
2015 Former Egyptian president Mohammad Mursi is sentenced to life in prison for espionage.
2016 Jo Cox, a British Member of Parliament, is killed in her constituency.
2017 Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl dies at the age of 87.
