1988 - The human-powered aircraft Daedalus crashed into the sea near the Aegean island of Santorini when a gust of wind broke a wing after a record-breaking flight from Crete. Greek cycling champion Kanellos Kanellopoulos, 31, plunged into the water with the plane about 10 metres from shore, but was unhurt, after covering 74 nautical miles between the two islands in less than three hours 55 minutes. “I was expecting the takeoff to be horrible, but it went off great, especially with the tailwind. The most turbulent area was here at the end,” said Kanellopoulos after landing. Kanellopoulos was given a hero’s welcome by the islanders. The Daedalus, variously described as a “flying bicycle” and a “flying potato chip,” has a wing span of 112 feet.
Other important events
1728 - A huge fire destroys a large part of Copenhagen.
1795 - Warren Hastings, former British governor general of India, is acquitted of high treason.
1848 - French voters, with universal male suffrage for the first time, go to the polls to elect a national assembly.
1904 - United States acquires property of French Panama Canal Company.
1935 - Poland’s Constitution is adopted after nine years of discussions.
1964 - Copenhagen’s trademark Little Mermaid statue gets her head sawn off by unknown men. The head is never found and a new one is moulded and welded on her.
1969 - Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to death for killing New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
1972 - Two US Apollo 16 astronauts blast off from the moon and rejoin command ship for journey back to Earth.
1975 - US President Gerald Ford declares that the Vietnam War is over.
1990 - Namibia becomes the 160th member of the United Nations.
1991 - Tens of thousands of striking Soviet workers fill the streets in Minsk on the eve of the Communist Party plenum.
1992 - McDonald’s opens its first fast-food restaurant in the Chinese capital of Beijing.
1998 - MV Doulos, the world’s largest floating book fair, is docked at Port Khalid in Sharjah for the first time.
2004 - US President George W. Bush takes steps to restore normal trade ties with Libya.
2006 - Hungary’s Socialist-led governing coalition wins runoff parliamentary ballots.
2007 - Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin dies of cardiac arrest.
2010 - Karting champion Christophe Hissette is killed in a crash at the Dubai Autodrome.
2011 - Yahsat, a UAE-based satellite communications company, launches its first satellite into orbit.
2013 - Kuwaiti Saud Al Sanousi wins the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
2016 - The UAE and more than 175 countries sign the historic Paris climate agreement at the United Nations headquarters.
