1993 French police moved in to end a 46-hour school hostage drama in a west Paris suburb, rescuing six infants and their teacher unharmed and killing the “human bomb” who held them captive with dynamite. Crack police burst into the nursery school room after the hostage taker, who had strapped 16 sticks of primed dynamite to his body, dozed off in a corner of the room. The man woke up while the police were trying to evacuate the hostages. He behaved menacingly and they immediately shot him dead, Interior Minister Charles Pasqua said. “The nightmare is over,” Pasqua said outside the school in the wealthy suburb of Neuilly. “The madman has been killed.” The six little girls and their teacher, Laurence Dreyfus, were all safe and well. The daring police raid in a literally explosive situation put an abrupt end to an unprecedented hostage drama that gripped France and tested the new government.
Other important events
1718 The world’s first machine gun is patented by English inventor James Puckle.
1767 Genoa sells island of Corsica to France.
1918 The first experimental airmail route in the US starts between Washington, Philadelphia and New York.
1923 Britain formally recognises Transjordan as independent state under Emir Abdullah.
1924 US Congress passes bill instituting immigrant quotas based on nationality.
1928 The Royal Flying Doctor Service is inaugurated in Cloncurry, Queensland.
1930 Ellen Church, the first airline stewardess, goes on duty aboard a United Airlines flight between San Francisco and Cheyenne, Wyoming.
1935 The first section of the Moscow Metro opens to the public.
1940 The first McDonald’s restaurant opens in San Bernardino, California.
1955 Austrian state treaty is signed, ending 10 years of Allied occupation.
1957 Britain explodes its first thermonuclear bomb in central Pacific.
1963 Astronaut Gordon Cooper is launched into space aboard Faith 7 on the longest American space mission to date.
1988 Soviet troops begin withdrawal from Afghanistan.
1989 Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev makes historic visit to China.
1990 Philippines notifies the US that it will terminate its military bases agreement.
1991 Edith Cresson becomes France’s first woman prime minister.
1992 Opposition supporters seize Azerbaijan’s parliament and presidential palace.
1995 At least 60 people are killed in Tamil Nadu, India, when an express train rammed into a goods train that apparently ignored a stop signal.
1998 India declares itself a nuclear nation after five bomb tests in a week.
2003 At least 38 people are burned alive when a blaze whips through packed carriages of an express train near the northern Indian city of Ludhiana.
2007 Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern becomes the first leader from Ireland to address joint houses of British Parliament.
2008 UAE and UK sign a peaceful nuclear energy cooperation agreement in Abu Dhabi.
2009 Pope Benedict XVI visits Christianity’s holiest place in Occupied Jerusalem.
2012 Francois Hollande is sworn in as France’s first Socialist President in 17 years.
2014 A heavily-laden ferry capsizes and sinks on the Meghna river, Bangladesh, killing at least 29 people.
2016 The world biggest cruise ship Harmony of the Seas sails from the STX Saint-Nazaire shipyard, western France.
2017 Smart Dubai Office launches Dubai Now app to access all government services in Dubai.
HIGHLIGHT
