1997 - Britain’s Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam urged people to keep calm and to stay off the streets after Irish Republican prisoners shot dead Protestant guerrilla chief Billy Wright (above) in Northern Ireland’s top-security Maze jail. Mowlam said the murder at the prison, which she called a “very serious lapse in security”, had the potential to damage the fragile peace process. “I would say to everybody to show calm and common sense. Taking to the streets and taking other action at this point will not stop the chaos and misery that we have lived through in Northern Ireland for so many years.” Wright, 37, was shot five times in the back by inmates belonging to the INLA Republican splinter guerrilla group.
Other important events
1825 - First public railroad using a steam locomotive is completed in England.
1932 - Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City.
1943 - German warship Scharnhorst sinks in Barents Sea during Second World War.
1945 - The World Bank is created with an agreement signed by 28 nations.
1949 - The Netherlands grants sovereignty to Indonesia after more than three centuries.
1956 - United Nations fleet begins clearing the Suez Canal after the Suez War.
1968 - US Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, returns safely to Earth after a historic six-day journey.
1969 - Libya, Sudan and United Arab Republic announce political, economic and military agreement in Tripoli.
1972 - Australia halts military aid to South Vietnam, ending its involvement in the Vietnam War.
1978 - Algerian President Houari Boumedienne, who had ruled over Algeria for more than 13 years, passes away.
1979 - The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan.
1989 - Egypt and Syria resume diplomatic relations, ending a decade-old rift.
1991 - All 129 people survive when a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 crash-lands in a field after both engines failed two minutes into a flight from Stockholm.
1995 - Israeli troops in Ramallah end 28 years of occupation.
1997 - Italian tugboats rescue 825 illegal immigrants, most of them Kurds, from a Turkish ship.
1999 - Oil slicks from the sunken tanker Erika spread along the west coast of France.
2004 - Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko wins Ukraine’s presidency after a historic and wrenching election.
2007 - Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in a bomb blast in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
2009 - UAE signs agreement with South Korea to build four civilian nuclear reactors.
2011 - Two speeding passenger buses collide, killing at least 35 people, on the Dhaka-Rangpur highway in Bangladesh.
2015 - Iraqi army declares victory over Daesh in Ramadi.
