2000
Baghdad airport reopens
Iraq officially reopens its international airport, but there are no aircraft, passengers or cargo to handle. Transport and Communications Minister Ahmad Murtada told reporters on the tarmac of the Saddam International Airport that its facilities are now ready “and we are expecting the arrival of aircraft” from friendly countries. Murtada slammed the embargo that “has prevented Iraqi citizens from using the airport for 10 years. There is no international resolution banning flights to Iraq. It is a US-British-Zionist decision that is neither lawful, humane nor fair.” An Iraqi military transport plane crowned the ceremony by landing on the renovated runway after a 90-minute symbolic flight from western Iraq. The airport was last used for a commercial flight only hours before the outbreak of the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait. Since then, only a few planes have landed, mainly carrying humanitarian aid. Iraq flew its fleet of 15 Boeing aircraft to Jordan, Tunisia and Iran for safekeeping shortly before the Gulf War. Its efforts to bring the jets home have failed and the planes now are likely too old to fly.
1743 - Sweden cedes southern Finland to Russia in the Peace of Abo.
1859 - The first airmail in the US, sent by balloon, takes off from Lafayette, Indiana.
1879 - Ferdinand Lesseps of France forms the Panama Canal Company.
1907 - Pike Place Market, a popular tourist destination and registered historic district in Seattle, Washington, opened.
1920 - Romania joins Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia in alliance.
1945 - Indonesia declares its independence from the Netherlands.
1976 - Tidal wave on Philippine island of Mindanao leaves estimated 8,000 people dead or missing.
1980 - Diplomatic officials close the British Embassy in Iran because of hostile demonstrations.
1985 - A car packed with dynamite explodes outside a supermarket in Beirut killing more than 50 people and wounding 100.
1988 - Pakistan’s President Zia ul-Haq and US Ambassador Arnold Raphel are killed when their Pakistani military plane explodes.
1991 - Italy repatriates the last of an estimated 18,000 Albanian refugees who arrived in southern Italy by boat earlier in the month.
1993 - Miners massacre 73 Yanomami Indians in the Brazilian Amazon.
1994 - Riots ensue as King Letsie III of Lesotho dissolves the country’s first democratically elected government, which had been operating for 20 years
1995 - A bomb explodes at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.
1996 - Ruth Perry becomes Africa’s first female head of state when she is chosen by a meeting of West African leaders to chair Liberia’s ruling council.
1998 - US President Bill Clinton admits to an affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
1999 - An earthquake in northwest Turkey, kills more than 2,000.
2002 - Shaikh Hamad Bin Eisa Al Khalifa becomes the first Bahraini leader to visit Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
2004 - Shaikh Ahmad Bin Hasher Al Maktoum wins a Olympic gold medal at the men’s double trap shooting in Athens.
2005 - Russian navy ships and long-range bombers head to a Chinese peninsula jutting into the Yellow Sea for the first joint military exercises.
2007 - A massive fire rages in Sharjah’s Port Khalid area, sending flames dozens of feet high.
2008 - The Israel cabinet votes to release 200 Palestinian prisoners as a goodwill gesture.
2013 - Usain Bolt wins his third successive world 200m title at the World Athletics Championships in Moscow.
