Tanker set on fire in gunboat attack
1988 - The Norwegian flag supertanker Happy Kari reached safe anchorage off Fujairah after surviving a fierce blaze which broke out on board following a dawn attack by Iranian gunboats north of Ras Al Khaimah. The vessel was on its way to Rotterdam with a full load of crude oil from Kuwait when it was attacked twice in a span of an hour, 25 nautical miles north of Ras Al Khaimah. The ship’s crew accommodation quarters on the starboard side were set ablaze as the Iranians fired rocket-propelled grenades that punched a massive hole in one of the tanks. Three firefighting tugs took about four hours to bring the blaze under control. Fortunately, there were no injuries among the crew according to the master, Captain Haakon Liseth.
February 11
1798 - French forces take Rome.
1889 - Constitution is granted in Japan, with two-chamber Diet, but Emperor retains extensive powers.
1922 - United States and Japan sign naval agreement.
1929 - Italy signs the Lateran Treaty, establishing an independent Vatican City.
1945 - US President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin sign the Yalta Agreement during the Second World War.
1956 - Referendum in Malta favours integration with Britain.
1968 - Madison Square Garden opens in New York City.
1973 - The National Inventors Hall of Fame is founded in US.
1975 - Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female head of the British Conservative Party.
1979 - Followers of Ayatollah Khomeini seize power in Iran.
1986 - Soviet dissident Anatoly Shcharansky walks to freedom, ending nearly nine years of captivity.
1989 - Shaikh Shakbout Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, former ruler of Abu Dhabi, passes away.
1990 - Nelson Mandela is released after 27 years in South African prisons.
1996 - Two car bombs rip through the Algerian capital, killing at least 18 people in conflict between security forces and fundamentalists.
2002 - UN bans child soldiers.
2006 - Adventurer Steve Fossett completes the longest non-stop flight in aviation history after flying around the globe in 80 hours.
2008 - Rebel soldiers shoot and critically wound East Timor’s President Jose Ramos-Horta in a failed coup attempt.
2009 - Morgan Tsvangirai is sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.
2011 - Hosni Mubarak steps down as the President of Egypt after 30 years in power.
2012 - American singer Whitney Houston dies at Beverly Hilton Hotel in California at the age of 48.
2013 - Pope Benedict delivers a letter to Cardinals announcing his resignation on February 28 due to ill health.
2016 - At least 30 people die in a pre-dawn prison riot in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey.
