73 crushed to death in Manila
2006 - At least 73 people were killed in a stampede at a stadium in Manila as they scrambled to get into a popular Philippine television game show offering cash and other prizes, the health secretary and witnesses said. Vice-President Noli de Castro had put the death toll at 79, with other estimates even higher. But Health Secretary Francisco Duque told Reuters there had been some double-counting of victims of the accident that took place, adding that 353 people were injured. Most of the dead were elderly women, crushed against a closed steel gate. One child was killed, hospital officials said. Some 50,000 people had assembled around the Ultra Stadium in suburban Pasig where the first anniversary of Wowowee, a popular noontime television show, was to be held.
February 4
1874 - British forces under Garnet Wolseley burn Kumasi, Ghana, ending Ashanti War.
1899 - Filipinos stage revolt against the US because independence is not granted.
1938 - Adolf Hitler assumes office of German war minister and names Joachim von Ribbentrop foreign minister.
1945 - US President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin begin a wartime conference at Yalta.
1969 - Yasser Arafat takes over as Chairman of PLO.
1972 - Britain and nine other nations recognise East Pakistan as independent nation of Bangladesh.
1980 - Abul Hassan Bani-Sadr takes office as Iran’s first President.
1981 - Gulf Cooperation Council is formed.
1996 - Guatemalan President Alvaro Arzu escapes unharmed when a motorcycle carrying two men lunges toward him as he rides horseback in Antigua, Guatemala.
1997 - Nawaz Sharif clinches a landslide victory in Pakistan’s general election.
1998 - A 6.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tremors in Afghanistan’s remote northeast kill at least 4,500 people.
2004 - Social networking website Facebook is launched.
2005 - Ukraine parliament confirms Yulia Tymoshenko as the country’s new Prime Minister.
2012 - Russia and China veto a United Nations Security Council draft resolution that backed an Arab League plan to “facilitate” a political transition in Syria
2013 - Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro casts his vote at a polling station in Havana, his first time since he stepped down for health reasons.
2014 - Satya Nadella becomes the new CEO of Microsoft.
