1983 - Rothmans Opel driver Saeed Al Hajri won the season and Kuwait’s Michel Saleh won the day when the Bahrain International Rally ended amid an abundance of congratulations for both men. There were commiserations for the great-heartedness of defending Gulf champion Chris Walles who saw his dreams of retaining the title shattered when a broken fan belt cost him a time loss of 20 minutes. It allowed Al Hajri, the Datsun driver and only challenger for the championship, to set his own leisurely pace and he coasted home without even endangering his supremacy. For Toyota driver Saleh, who continued his hair-raising but frequently brilliant style of motoring to the very last kilometre, it was a well-deserved victory.
Other important events
1865 - Andrew Johnson becomes the 17th US president after Lincoln’s assassination.
1923 - Insulin, discovered by Canadian Dr Frederick Banting, is made available for general use by diabetics.
1945 - Japanese-occupied Laos declares independence from France.
1956 - The first TV station in the world broadcasts all its programming in colour - WNBQ in Chicago.
1964 - Ian Smith becomes premier of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
1968 - Two unmanned Soviet satellites link up while in orbit around the Earth.
1974 - Military coup in Niger overthrows government of President Hamani Diori.
1982 - Five fundamentalists are executed in Egypt for the assassination of President Anwar Sadat.
1986 - US fighters attack Libya in retaliation for a bomb attack on a West Berlin discotheque.
1989 - Ninety-six people are killed in Britain’s worst sporting disaster at the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield.
1993 - A car bomb explodes at a shopping mall in Bogota, Colombia, killing at least five people.
1997 - A blaze guts 70,000 tents in Mina, Saudi Arabia, killing 343 pilgrims.
1998 - Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge, dies at 73.
1999 - Nato takes responsibility for the bombing of a refugee convoy in Kosovo that killed 75 civilians.
2002 - An Air China passenger aircraft crashes into a wooded South Korean mountain, killing 128 people but 39 people have a miraculous escape.
2005 - Flames and smoke send people jumping from windows of a hotel in Paris in an overnight fire that leaves 20 dead.
2006 - Scientists find antibodies in camel that may treat colon cancer.
2007 - A daring robbery takes place in Graff, a luxury store in Wafi City mall in Dubai.
2008 - Maoists win more than half of the directly elected seats in Nepal.
2013 - Two bombs explode near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people.
2017 - Shaikha Aisa Bin Rashid Al Khalifa becomes the first Bahraini woman to graduate from Sandhurst.
