Foundation stone for the new Dh165 million Al Ghurair Oil Mills crushing plant was laid by General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Minister of Defence. This will bring the total investment in the Jebel Ali Free Zone-based Al Ghurair Industrial Complex to more than Dh1.3 billion. The complex, run by Dubai-based Abdullah Al Ghurair Group, includes a 1,900-tonne flour mill, a 300-tonne maize grits plant, a 450-tonne edible oil refinery, a 220-tonne durum mill and storage silos with a capacity of 300,000 tonnes. Eisa Al Ghurair, Al Ghurair Oil Mills’ general manager, said the plant occupies 40,000 square metres of space and has a capacity of 4,000 tonnes per day. It is expected to be operational in August 2002.
Other important events:
1898 Spain declares war on 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. It was the world’s tallest building.
1915 The Ottomans begin a military campaign which claimed 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 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 eastern Afghanistan city of Jalalabad, killing at least 54 people.
1990 The US space shuttle Discovery takes the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.
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 UAE 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 right to throne for love after marrying human rights activist Mabel Wisse Smit.
2006 Three bombings hit an Egyptian beach resort Sinai and killing at least 21 people.
2007 Gunmen kill 65 Ethiopians and nine Chinese in a raid on an oil field 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 UAE and Argentina sign a Memorandum of Cooperation in the field of peaceful nuclear energy.
