August 7
1909 Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York, New York to San Francisco, California.
1914 German army occupies city of Liege Belgium.
1941 Soviet planes carry out their first bombing raids against Berlin in the Second World War.
1944 The world’s first program-controlled calculator, a mechanical machine popularly called the Harvard Mark I, is presented to Harvard University in Boston.
1945 Soviet Union declares war on Japan seven days before Japanese surrender in the Second World War.
1957 An estimated 1,000 people are killed in Cali, Colombia, when a military truck convoy carrying dynamite and gasoline blows up.
1960 The Ivory Coast becomes independent of France.
1980 Thirteen people are executed for their alleged role in exiled Premier Bakhtiar’s plot to overthrow Ayatollah Khomeini.
1986 Edward Lee Howard, a fugitive former CIA agent suspected of selling information, is granted political asylum in the Soviet Union.
1987 Former Lebanese president Camille Chamoun, dies of heart attack.
1990 US send troops and warplanes to Saudi Arabia to protect against invasion by Iraq.
1991 Croatian government accepts a federal peace plan in Yugoslavia and says it will not be first to break a ceasefire.
1996 Flash floods in Spain race through a Pyrenees Mountain camp jammed with hundreds of vacationers, at least 67 people die.
1998 Two car bombs tear into American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people.
2000 Dubai Airport Road underpass is opened to public.
2002 Alvaro Uribe is sworn in as president of Colombia.
2004 Nigel Roder beats six rivals by public acclaim to become England’s first official jester for more than 350 years.
2005 Seven Russian sailors are rescued by a British undersea robot after their mini-submarine is trapped on the Pacific Ocean floor.
2008 Syria authorities release Arif Dalila, an economist, after seven years in jail.
2010 UAE wins the Under 23 Gulf Cup football tournament beating Kuwait 1-0 in Doha.
2011 Capt Salem Al Mazroui is murdered in his home in Houston, Texas after two robbers forced their way in their house.
2013 A massive early morning fire destroys the arrival halls of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.
2014 Two Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, are sentences to life after being found guilty of crimes against humanity.
HIGHLIGHT
2000
UAE backs Arafat stand
His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, has reiterate the UAE’s support to the Palestinian people and their struggle to regain their rights. Shaikh Khalifa welcomes Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in Abu Dhabi. He urged the United States, the main broker in the Middle East peace process, to observe impartiality and to seek solutions which conform with the international resolutions and the peoples’ right to self-determination. Shaikh Khalifa reiterates the need to return Jerusalem to Palestinian sovereignty. Shaikh Khalifa hails Arafat’s position during the recent summit held in Camp David and his firm stand against all kinds of pressure applied to force him to give concessions on the future of Jerusalem. Shaikh Khalifa and Arafat exchanges views on the developments of the peace process. Arafat apprised Shaikh Khalifa on the reasons behind the deadlock reached in Camp David and the reaction of international community to it, based on the tour he made recently.
