2001 - At least 42 people were killed and dozens injured when two trains packed with holidaymakers collided on the Indonesian island of Java, police said. The two economy class trains, the Mpu Jaya coming from Jakarta and the Gaya Baru heading to Jakarta, collided at Ketanggungan station, some 20km south of Brebes and 270km east of Jakarta early in the morning. “The Gaya Baru, which was halting at the station, was hit at quite high speed by the Mpu Jaya,” Transport Minister Agum Gumelar said shortly after returning to Jakarta after a visit to Ketanggungan. Gumelar said the Mpu Jaya had ignored a red light and entered the track that Gaya Baru was on. He added that the driver of Mpu Jaya was alive but with a broken arm and was now being questioned.
Other important events:
1066 - Norman invader William the Conqueror becomes king of England.
1741 - Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius creates the Centigrade temperature scale.
1776 - General George Washington and his troops cross the Delaware River for a surprise attack against British Hessian forces at Trenton, New Jersey.
1897 - Italy cedes Kassala to Egypt.
1923 - The Imperial Theater opens in New York City, US.
1926 - Hirohito becomes emperor of Japan, succeeding his father, Emperor Yoshihito.
1936 - Mutinous warlords in China release Chiang Kai-shek after kidnapping him and holding him for 12 days.
1941 - Hong Kong surrenders to Japan in Second World War.
1959 - Soviet Union agrees to give financial and technical aid to Syria.
1971 - Fire burns down hotel in Seoul, South Korea, killing 139 people.
1974 - Cyclone devastates Darwin, Australia.
1977 - Comedian Charlie Chaplin dies at the age of 88.
1986 - An Iraqi Airways jetliner with 107 people aboard explodes as it attempts a forced landing on a remote desert airstrip in Saudi Arabia. Sixty-two people are killed.
1989 - Deposed Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena are executed in Romania.
1991 - Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the Soviet Union.
1994 - Algeria grants permission for a French jetliner to fly to France with Muslim militant hijackers and their hostages.
1996 - A tropical storm lashes the Pacific island of Borneo, killing at least 120 people.
1999 - Astronauts release the newly repaired Hubble Space Telescope from space shuttle Discovery.
2003 - A plane bound for Beirut crashes into the sea after takeoff from Benin killing more than 80 people.
2006 - Ethiopian warplanes attack two Islamist-held airfields in Somalia.
2011 - Bomb attacks on Nigerian churches during Christmas services kill at least 32.
2015 - Zahran Aloush, the head of Jaish Al Islam, one of the most powerful Syrian rebel groups, dies in aerial raid.
