1988 - A Delta Air Lines Boeing 727 with 104 people aboard crashed on take-off at Dallas-Fort Worth international airport, exploded and burned, killing at least 15 people. The witnesses said flight 1141, bound for Salt Lake City, had problems with its tail and a rear engine may have been on fire as it tried to take off. Area hospitals reported at least 46 people had survived and were undergoing treatment. An unknown number apparently walked away from the charred wreckage, which lay in two pieces in a field near the runway, and likely were not taken to hospitals. Some of the survivors crawled out of the right side of the plane.
Other important events
1918 - Bolshevik troops attack British Embassy in Petrograd, Russia.
1957 - Malaysia gains independence from Britain.
1969 - Boxer Rocky Marciano dies in a plane crash in Iowa at age 45.
1990 - East and West Germany sign a treaty to join legal and political systems.
1991 - Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan declare independence.
1993 - Venezuela president Carlos Perez flees.
1994 - Irish Republican Army declares an open-ended ceasefire in its 24-year campaign against British rule of Northern Ireland.
1997 - Princess Diana dies in a high-speed Paris car crash.
2005 - Some 1,000 Iraqi Shiite pilgrims die in a stampede over a Baghdad bridge.
2010 - American forces end seven years of combat operations in Iraq.
2016 - Placido Domingo inaugurates Dubai Opera, the first opera house in Downtown.
2017 - Around 27,400 Rohingya Muslims cross into Bangladesh, fleeing violence in Myanmar.
