1987 — At least 156 people aboard a Northwest airlines jet, which crashed on a highway in Detroit, died in the fiery plunge, the second worst air rash in US history. The plane caught fire seconds after take-off, clipped a building and plummeted into cars on a busy highway in Romulus, a western suburb of Detroit. A spokesman for the Wayne county sheriff’s office, whose jurisdiction includes Romulus, said in addition to those on board at least two motorists died in the tragedy. Dahlen said the plane was carrying 144 passengers and nine crew. Three of the crew members were in transit and not working on the flight. Four-year-old girl Cecelia Cichan was the only passenger to survive. Steven Rothmeier, the airline’s chairman, said in a statement issued at the company’s headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that Northwest was “stunned by this tragic loss”. It was the second-worst US air crash ever. In 1982, 153 people were killed when a Pan-Am jet went down in Kenner, Louisiana.
Other important events
1858 - A telegraphed message from Britain’s Queen Victoria to US President James Buchanan is transmitted over the new trans-Atlantic cable.
1896 - British protectorate in Ashanti, West Africa, is proclaimed.
1964 - Major-General Nguyen Khanh takes over presidency of South Vietnam, ousting Major-General Duong Van Minh.
1972 - Morocco’s King Hassan II escapes an assassination attempt by Moroccan Air Force jets in a military coup attempt.
1977 - Elvis Presley, known as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, is found dead at his home in Memphis, Tennessee.
1990 - Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev restores the citizenship of exiled writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
1991 - An Indian Airlines plane carrying 63 passengers and a crew of six crashes at Imphal, killing all on board.
1993 - Bosnian warring factions agree to place post-war Sarajevo under UN control.
1999 - Russian parliament confirms Vladimir Putin as prime minister.
2001 - Nato allows British servicemen and women to head to Macedonia for a mission to collect and destroy rebel arms.
2003 - Ugandan military ruler Idi Amin dies of multiple organ failure.
2005 - Colombian jet carrying about 160 people, mainly French tourists, crashes in the mountains of western Venezuela killing all on board.
2006 - The Israeli army begins its withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
2009 - Chinese badminton genius Lin Dan becomes the first to win three successive men’s single titles at the World Badminton Championships in Hyderabad.
2010 - China surpasses Japan as the world’s second-largest economy after three decades as an emerging superpower.
2012 - South African Police open fire on the thousands of Lonmin strikers at the Marikana platinum mine in South Africa killing 34 miners.
2013 - A ferry collides with a cargo vessel in Cebu City, Philippines killing 38 people.
2014 - Veteran Egyptian cartoonist Mustafa Hussain dies of health complications related to cancer, at the age of 79.
2015 - Pakistan’s Punjab province minister Shuja Khanzada and eight others are killed in attack.
