1992 - Britain’s Princess Diana went alone to India’s monument to love, the Taj Mahal, and visited a family planning clinic in the world’s most populous democracy. The princess, on a six-day tour of India, left her husband Prince Charles in Delhi while she went to Agra, where she visited a birth control clinic and the Taj, India’s premier tourist attraction. At the white marble mausoleum, built by 17th century emperor Shah Jahan for his wife, she posed for the British press. She returned from her private viewing of the riverside monument, cleared of its usual flock of tourists and touts, to say, barely audibly, “A fascinating experience...very healing.” Asked what she meant, she started a new flood of speculation by saying, “You can work that out for yourself.”
Other important events
1798 - French forces take Rome.
1888 - King Lobengda of Matabele, Rhodesia, accepts British protection.
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.
1968 - Communist troops execute 300 civilians in South Vietnam and bury them in a mass grave during fighting for city of Hue.
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.
1994 - A Nato-enforced ceasefire takes hold in Sarajevo.
2002 - United Nations 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 in the 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.
2014 - A military aircraft C-130 Hercules carrying 103 people crashes in the Oum Al Bouaghi region, Algeria, with a sole survivor.
