1993 Nobel Prize-winning author Sir William Golding died at his home in southwest England. He was 81. Golding had died of natural causes at his home near the coastal town of Falmouth in Cornwall. Golding won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 73 for books that portrayed the darkest side of human nature and the depths of human misery. He was educated at Oxford University and took up teaching, acting, directing and writing. Golding was knighted in 1988. He had spent his last years quietly with his wife Ann at their home. The Nobel Prize for William Golding came nearly 30 years after the enormous success of the British author’s first published novel Lord of the Flies — a chilling account of the cruelty to which a group of small boys sink when they are cast away on a coral island. Apart from Lord of the Flies, his best-known novels are Pincher Martin, describing the last moments of a drowning sailor, and Rites of Passage which in 1980 won Britain’s premier literary award, the Booker Prize.
Other important events
1819 US ship Savannah arrives in Liverpool, England, marking the first Atlantic crossing by a steamship.
1850 Princess Louise of The Netherlands marries Crown Prince Karl of Sweden-Norway.
1867 Mexican Emperor Maximilian I is executed by firing squad on the orders of President Benito Juarez.
1933 Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky is granted political asylum in France.
1941 Germany and Italy expel US diplomats during Second World War.
1944 US troops take Saipan Island in Pacific from Japanese during Second World War.
1948 Columbia Records launches the long-playing record (LP) in New York City.
1961 Kuwait becomes independent of Britain.
1970 Conservative Party leader Edward Heath wins general election.
1976 King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden marries Silvia Sommerlath.
1981 The three-stage European-designed Ariane 1 rocket blast off from Kourou, French Guyana.
1982 New underpass at the Dubai Clock Tower roundabout is inaugurated.
1984 Michael Jordan signs for the Chicago Bulls basketball team.
1987 Explosion in Barcelona department store garage kills 12 people and injures 31.
1992 Ireland approves Maastricht Treaty on European Union.
1998 Serbian troops seal Kosovo’s border with Albania.
1999 Britain’s Prince Edward weds Sophie Rhys-Jones at Windsor Castle and become the Earl and Countess of Wessex.
2001 A United Nations fuel barge sails into Kisangani, reopening the Congo River after war severed most important transportation route in 1998.
2006 The United Nations inaugurates its new Human Rights Council.
2007 French President Nicolas Sarkozy reshuffles his cabinet and makes Christine Lagarde the first woman economy minister.
2010 Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden weds her long time boyfriend and personal trainer Daniel Westling in the Storkyrkan cathedral in Stockholm.
2012 Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is disqualified by the Supreme Court of the country.
2013 James Gandolfini, the Emmy-winning actor dies while on holiday in Rome, at the age of 51.
2014 Prince Felipe VI is sworn in as Spain’s king before both houses of parliament.
