February 6
1643 Dutch mariner Abel Tasman discovers Fiji Islands in the Pacific.
1715 Peace of Utrecht ends war between Spain and Portugal.
1778 Britain declares war on France.
1897 Crete proclaims union with Greece.
1936 Adolf Hitler opens the fourth Winter Olympic Games in Munich.
1941 British forces occupy Benghazi, Libya during Second World War.
1951 A crowded commuter train crashes at Woodbridge, New Jersey, killing more than 80 people.
1952 Britain’s King George VI dies and is succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II.
1958 A plan carrying the Manchester United football team from a European Cup tie crashes at Munich, killing 23 people.
1959 US successfully test-fires a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile.
1964 England and France agree on constructing English Channel rail tunnel. The tunnel opened in 1994.
1967 Muhammad Ali knocks out Ernie Terrell to win heavyweight boxing title in Houston.
1971 US Apollo 14 astronauts prepare to head back to earth after spending 33 hours on the moon.
1973 Construction begins on the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada.
1987 Two Soviet cosmonauts are launched on a mission to the orbiting space station Mir.
1993 American tennis player Arthur Ashe dies of Aids.
1994 Martti Ahtisaari wins Finland’s first direct presidential election.
1995 Two 100-tonne spaceships fly in formation in the first US-Russian rendezvous in 20 years.
1997 Marking his first year as president of Haiti, Rene Preval distributes land to peasants.
1998 A 5.6 magnitude earthquake in Afghanistan claims 4,000 lives.
1999 Crown Prince Abdullah becomes King of Jordan.
2001 The Hatta Heritage Village is inaugurated.
2004 A huge explosion destroys a subway car, killing 39 people in Moscow, Russia.
2006 Stephen Harper becomes prime minister of Canada.
2008 Eight military personnel including a major general killed when a Pakistan army helicopter crashes.
2011 Thomas Bjorn becomes the first Danish-born player to capture the Qatar Masters.
2012 An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale kills 50 people in central Philippines.
2013 Opposition leader of the Unified Democratic Nationalist party, Shukri Belaid is shot dead outside his home in Tunisia.
2016 German cyclist Marcel Kittel wins the Dubai Tour 2016.
2017 A massive fire breaks out at the newly opened Kuwait opera house.
HIGHLIGHT
1993
Pakistani court frees Zardari
A Pakistani anti-terrorist court freed Asif Ali Zardari, husband of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, after more than two years in jail without a conviction. “It is the people’s victory,” a delighted Zardari said. “It shows the cases against me were cooked up. There is no truth in the charges.” Pakistan’s most prominent political prisoner said he hoped to go to London to see his wife, the former prime minister, who gave birth to their third child. The “Karachi anti-terrorist court granted bail to Zardari on the last of 12 charges filed against him for alleged corruption during the 20 months when Bhutto was prime minister. The 39-year-old businessman release was part of a policy by the government to try to ease an increasingly bitter stand-off with Benazir’s opposition Pakistan People’s Party, diplomats said. He was arrested in October 1990, two months after President Ishaq Khan dismissed Benazir as prime minister on disputed charges of misrule.
