Top travel writer Stark is dead
1993 - Dame Freya Stark, one of the great travel writers of the century, has died at her home in Italy, aged 100, her publishers said. British-born Stark, who died at her home near Venice, wrote more than 24 books based on her travels in the Middle East. They continued to sell more than 50 years after first being published. “She regarded death as her last great journey which she’d been looking forward to for some years,” said London publisher John Murray. “She simply died of old age.” She began her travels in the 1930s while on government service in the Middle East. She was a solitary traveller in an age when women rarely went abroad alone. As a single female, she ventured through Arab countries by camel, pony and mule. She travelled in Persia, Arabia, Turkey and Afghanistan, sometimes in areas no European women and few European men had ever seen. Travel was in Stark’s blood from an early age.
May 9
1877 - Romania proclaims its independence from the Turks.
1901 - Australia opens its first parliament in Melbourne.
1926 - Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett become first men to fly over the North Pole.
1927 - Canberra replaces Melbourne as the capital of Australia.
1936 - Italy annexes Ethiopia.
1946 - Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III abdicates and Umberto II proclaims himself king.
1955 - West Germany is admitted into Nato.
1960 - The US Food and Drug Administration approves use of a birth control pill.
1967 - India’s Vice-President Zakir Hussain is named President, becoming the first Muslim to hold that office in the country.
1978 - The bullet-riddled body of Italy’s former prime minister Aldo Moro is found in a parked car in central Rome.
1979 - US and USSR sign Salt 2 treaty, limiting nuclear weapons.
1994 - South Africa’s newly elected parliament chooses Nelson Mandela as first black president.
2000 - Ras Al Khaimah issues a law to create a free trade zone.
2001 - Cuban President Fidel Castro makes a historic visit to Iran.
2011 - The $2.8 billion greenfield plant at Fujairah F2 power and desalination plant is inaugurated.
2016 - PDP-Laban presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte wins the Philippine presidential elections.
2017 - Liberal Moon Jae-in claims victory in South Korean presidential election after rivals concede.
