Floods and landslides have killed at least 75 people in one of the worst natural disasters to hit South Korea and 22 people were missing. The National Disaster Prevention Counter-Measures Headquarters said most of the victims had been camping in southern mountains where up to 36 cm of rain fell. Most of the missing were believed to be dead. Some 42,000 people from military and civilian agencies had joined the search and rescue operations. The mountain streams whose banks made such inviting campgrounds turned into killer cataracts under the weekend deluge. Campers were being rescued with ropes and pulleys across raging streams while rescuers on rope harnesses dangling from helicopters winched up survivors. South Koreans traditionally flock to southern mountain resorts at the height of the country’s vacation season.
Other important events
1858 English explorer John Speke discovers Lake Victoria.
1914 Germany declares war on France.
1936 Jesse Owens wins the 100 metre dash at the Berlin Olympics.
1958 Submarine USS Nautilus makes the first undersea voyage to geographic North Pole.
1960 Niger gains independence from France.
1989 Hashemi Rafsanjani is sworn in as President of Iran.
1992 Millions of South African blacks join a nationwide strike against white-led rule.
1993 UN begins its withdrawal of 20,000 peacekeepers in Cambodia.
1996 Denmark’s defence chief Admiral Hans Joergen Garde is killed in a Royal Danish Air Force plane crash in the Faroe Islands.
1997 Mohammad Khatami takes over as president of Iran.
2003 At least 31 people are killed when a huge blast causes a three-storey building to collapse in Gujarat, India.
2004 Nasa launches a messenger to Mercury, the sun’s closest planet.
2005 Mauritania’s army oust President Maaouya Ould Taya.
2008 More than 145 people are killed in a stampede at a Hindu shrine in Himachal Pradesh, India.
2014 A strong earthquake strikes in southern China’s Yunnan province, killing more than 367 people.
2016 Emirates flight EK521 from Kerala, India carrying 300 people catches fire shortly after landing at Dubai International Airport.
