Two Soviet cosmonauts were launched on a mission to the orbiting space station Mir and Western specialists said they expected the duo to try to break the record for length of stay in space. Commander Yuri Romanenko and flight engineer Alexander Laveikin took off in their Soyuz TM-2 vehicle. In a sign of the growing confidence of Soviet space directors in their programme, state television transmitted a live broadcast of the lift-off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan. The mission was the second to Mir, which was launched in February in 1986 and is planned to become the heart of the world’s first permanently manned space station. Shortly after lift-off, television showed Laveikin reporting at regular intervals to mission control outside Moscow that the flight was proceeding normally. The Soyuz TM-2 vehicle is scheduled to dock with Mir in two days’ time. The Soyuz TM-2 vehicle carrying Romanenko and Laveikin is one of a new generation of manned Soviet spacecraft
Other important events
1685 British King Charles II, the first on the throne dies.
1715 Peace of Utrecht ends war between Spain and Portugal.
1778 Britain declares war on France.
1819 British East India Company, represented by Stamford Raffles, establishes settlement at Singapore.
1897 Crete proclaims union with Greece.
1936 Adolf Hitler opens the fourth Winter Olympic Games in Munich.
1941 British forces occupy Benghazi, Libya during Second World War.
1951 A crowded commuter train crashes at Woodbridge, New Jersey, killing more than 80 people.
1952 Britain’s King George VI dies and is succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II.
1958 A plan carrying the Manchester United football team from a European Cup tie crashes at Munich, killing 23 people.
1959 US successfully test-fires a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile.
1964 England and France agree on constructing English Channel rail tunnel, the tunnel opened in 1994.
1967 Muhammad Ali knocks out Ernie Terrell for heavyweight boxing title in Houston.
1971 US Apollo 14 astronauts prepare to head back to earth after spending 33 hours on the moon.
1973 Construction begins on the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada.
1993 American tennis player Arthur Ashe dies of AIDS.
1994 Martti Ahtisaari wins Finland’s first direct presidential election.
1995 Two 100-ton spaceships fly in formation in the first US-Russian rendezvous in 20 years.
1997 Marking his first year as president of Haiti, Rene Preval distributes land to peasants.
1998 A 5.6 magnitude earthquake in Afghanistan claims 4,000 lives.
1999 Crown Prince Abdullah becomes King of Jordan.
2001 The Hatta Heritage Village is inaugurated.
2004 A huge explosion destroys a subway car, killing 39 people in Moscow, Russia.
2006 Stephen Harper becomes Prime Minister of Canada.
2008 Eight military personnel including a major general are killed when a Pakistan army helicopter crashes.
2011 Thomas Bjorn becomes the first Danish-born player to capture the Qatar Masters.
2012 An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter Scale kills 50 people in central Philippines.
2013 Opposition leader of the Unified Democratic Nationalist, Shukri Belaid is shot dead outside his home in Tunisia.
2016 German cyclist Marcel Kittel wins the Dubai Tour 2016..
