Stefka Kostadinova raised her game at the World Indoor Athletics Championships at Indianapolis. Kostadinova, unbeaten in three years and in more than 50 contests, improved her own indoor world record to 2.05 metres when she soared to victory in the women’s high jump. Kostadinova, the European indoor and outdoor champion, was presented with the high jump gold one of 10 on offer when West German Susanne BeyerHelm withdrew after clearing 2.02 metres at the first attempt. The Bulgarian then failed with her first attempt at 2.05 but sailed clear on the second to improve on the mark of 2.04 she cleared in Genoa, Italy, this year. It was the sixth world record to be set at the inaugural three-day championships. Kostadinova then raised the bar to 2.09 — one centimetre higher than her outdoor world mark — but was never close with any of her attempts. Kostadinova said, “I felt very good. My technique was strong and we had a very good field to jump against and that helped a lot.”
Other important events:
1817 The New York Stock Exchange is founded.
1865 A canal project to connect Amsterdam with the North Sea begins in the Netherlands.
1917 Riots and strikes break out in St Petersburg, marking start of Russian Revolution.
1920 Denmark and Cuba join the League of Nations.
1921 Spanish prime minister Eduardo Dato is assassinated in Madrid by an anarchist.
1950 Marshal Voroshilov announces the existence of the Soviet atom bomb.
1954 US and Japan sign mutual defence agreement.
1957 Egypt reopens the Suez Canal following Suez Crisis.
1965 First US combat troops lands in South Vietnam.
1970 Cyprus President Archbishop Makarios III escapes assassination as terrorists shoot down his helicopter.
1973 In a referendum, the people of Northern Ireland vote to remain within the United Kingdom.
1974 Charles de Gaulle Airport is opened in Paris, France.
1985 A car bomb explodes outside a mosque in a densely populated area in Beirut, killing 56.
1988 Emirates Golf Club is inaugurated in Dubai.
1990 West German parliament adopts resolution calling on united Germany to honour Poland’s western border.
1991 Forty foreign journalists and two US servicemen captured by Iraqi soldiers are turned over to Red Cross officials in Baghdad.
1992 Police divers pull 127 bodies from the sea after a ferry carrying visitors to a Buddhist shrine collides with an oil tanker in the Gulf of Thailand.
1994 A packed commuter train crashes on a sharp curve near Durban, South Africa, killing at least 63 people.
1996 China fires three ballistic missiles into waters off Taiwan’s main ports.
2002 The Mont Blanc Tunnel linking France and Italy is reopened three years after a horrific fire killed 39 people.
2004 Rawya Bint Saud Al Bu Saidi becomes first woman minister to join the Oman cabinet.
2005 Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov is killed by Russian troops.
2007 International Atomic Energy Agency governors approve cuts in technical aid to Iran.
2008 Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica dissolves Serbia’s government and calls for fresh elections.
2010 A 6.0 magnitude earthquake strikes eastern Turkey, killing 51 people.
2014 Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people, disappears.
