2003 - Fifty-one people were killed and more than two dozen injured when four coaches of a holiday train jumped rails in the western state of Maharashtra in India. The derailment occurred near the town of Rajapur, 400km south of Mumbai, when the train travelling from the adjoining state of Karnataka hit boulders on the track. “The boulders and mud had rolled on to the tracks due to a possible landslide as the region had been witnessing heavy rains in the last four days,” a railway spokesman said, adding a total of 25 others were injured. Hot and cold cutting mechanisms were being used in the wreckage to reach the bodies.
Other important events
1941 - Germany invades the Soviet Union during the Second World War.
1973 - Skylab 1 astronauts return safely to Earth after a record 28 days aboard the first US orbiting space station.
1982 - At least 19 people are killed when an Air India plane arriving in Mumbai from Singapore crashes after landing in a rainstorm.
1983 - The US space shuttle Challenger retrieves a satellite from orbit for the first time.
1989 - Rebel leader Jonas Savimbi and Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos agree to a ceasefire in the 14-year-old civil war in Zaire.
1992 - Mortar shells rain down on battered Sarajevo, killing at least 21 people.
1995 - British Prime Minister John Major resigns as leader of the ruling Conservative party.
2016 - Renowned Pakistani qawwali singer Amjad Sabri is shot dead in a Karachi gun attack.
2017 - International Cricket Council awards Test status to Afghanistan and Ireland.
