Displaying cool nerves and fine judgement of pace, defending champion Mohammad Mattar retained the UAE Desert Challenge ’92 title. In sweltering heat, Mattar, who stormed into the lead as the rally took its toll on a host of big names, was relentlessly chased by fellow Dubai rallyist Rashid Al Jaflah, who came second. It was another red letter day for Dubai rallyists, who successfully completed a clean sweep of the top three positions for the second successive year as Yahya Belhelli took third place. A disappointed man was young Saudi rallyist Abdullah Bakhashab, who pursued Mattar right until the eighth special stage before falling prey to a puncture and to compound his problems he lost the use of his front wheel drive. Mattar’s navigator Hassan Ali Bin Shahdoor perhaps summed up his colleague’s victory when he said that Mattar was a far superior driver than he was made out to be and has matured since winning last year.
Other important events:
1898 Spain declares war on the US for rejecting ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.
1908 Auto racing legend Ralph DePalma makes his debut in New York.
1913 Woolworth Building opens in New York City and becomes the world’s tallest building.
1915 The Ottomans begin a military campaign which is to claim the lives of over a million Armenians.
1953 British statesman Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
1965 President Sukarno orders the seizure of all foreign-owned property in Indonesia.
1967 Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed when the parachute straps of his spacecraft get entangled.
1970 China launches its first satellite.
1971 Soviet cosmonauts link up with unmanned satellite prior to attempt to build world’s first orbiting space laboratory.
1986 Duchess of Windsor dies aged 89.
1989 Rebels shell the eastern Afghanistan city of Jalalabad, killing at least 54 people.
1990 The US space shuttle Discovery takes the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.
1992 The Peshawar Accord is signed in Afghanistan. The peace and power sharing agreement establishes the post-communist Islamic State of Afghanistan.
1993 A massive IRA bomb wrecks the offices of two banks in London’s financial district, killing one and causing £1 billion worth of damage.
1995 The UAE’s cabinet approves the anti-drug law.
1997 Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan agree to cut troop levels along frontier.
2003 A filling station for hydrogen-powered vehicles, the first in the world, is opened in Iceland.
2004 Dutch prince John Friso, the second son of Queen Beatrix, gives up the right to the throne for love after marrying human rights activist Mabel Wisse Smit.
2006 Three bombings hit an Egyptian beach resort Sinai, killing at least 21 people.
2007 Gunmen kill 65 Ethiopians and nine Chinese in a raid on an oilfield in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
2009 Mexico shuts down schools, museums, libraries and theatres across the capital to contain a swine flu outbreak.
2011 An Indian guru Sri Satya Sai Baba dies in hospital in Puttaparthi, India.
2013 An eight-storey building in Savar, Bangladesh collapses, leaving a thousand people dead.
2014 The UAE and Argentina sign a Memorandum of Cooperation in the field of peaceful nuclear energy.
2016 Brightpoint Royal Women’s Hospital opens in Abu Dhabi.
