1982 - Oscar-winning actor Henry Fonda, who played heartland Americans in dozens of films including The Grapes of Wrath and Mr Roberts, died of heart failure. He was 77. Fonda’s fifth wife, Shirlee, was at his bedside at Cedan-Sinai Medical Centre when he died. His daughter, Jane, and son, Peter, arrived at the hospital after they received word of his death. Fonda, who wore a heart pacemaker for eight years, won the best actor Oscar for his role in On Golden Pond, but was too ill to attend the Academy Awards presentation last spring. Fonda has been hospitalised five times in the past 18 months. A funeral was unlikely. “I don’t like funerals,” Fonda told his biographer. “And it’s in my will that there won’t be one.”
Other important events
1658 - The first police force in the United States is established in New Amsterdam (now New York).
1687 - Duke of Lorraine and Louis of Baden defeat Turks under Sulaiman Pasha in Battle of Mohacs, ending Turkish occupation of Hungary.
1759 - Russian and Austrian forces defeat Prussians at Kunersdorf, Germany, and Dresden falls into Austrian hands.
1851 - Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine.
1877 - Asaph Hall discovers the Mars moon Deimos.
1898 - An Armistice ends the Spanish-American War.
1938 - Germany begins mobilisation of its armed forces.
1953 - Soviet Union tests first hydrogen bomb in Kazakhstan.
1960 - Echo I, the first communications satellite, is launched.
1964 - South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games due to the country’s racist policies.
1971 - Syria severs diplomatic relations with Jordan as border fighting breaks out.
1972 - Last American ground combat unit in South Vietnam is deactivated.
1976 - At least 2,000 people are killed at Tel Al Zaatar massacre, Beirut, during Lebanese Civil War.
1978 - Japan and China sign a peace treaty, implemented in October.
1985 - A Japanese Boeing 747 carrying 524 people crashes in the mountains near Tokyo.
1987 - Italian Olympic champion Alessandro Andrei smashes the world shot put record 22.91-metre at the Viareggio athletics meet.
1988 - Rebels seize a major Afghan town for the first time, taking the northern provincial capital of Kunduz as Soviet troops pull out.
1990 - Iraqi President Saddam Hussain offers to withdraw from Kuwait if Israel withdraws from Occupied Territories.
2005 - Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar is assassinated in Colombo.
2008 - Military junta that overthrew Mauritania’s government adopts a law transferring the presidency to the head of the junta.
2013 - Dutch prince Friso, younger brother of King Willem-Alexander, dies 18 months after he was left brain-damaged by an avalanche.
