January 14
1809 - England and Spain form alliance against Napoleon Bonaparte.
1814 - Denmark cedes Norway to Sweden in Treaty of Kiel.
1867 - Peru declares war on Spain.
1907 - Earthquake in Jamaica destroys Kingston and takes 1,000 lives.
1912 - Raymond Poincare becomes premier of France.
1929 - Afghan King Amanullah is forced to resign.
1935 - Iraq-Mediterranean oil pipeline goes into operation.
1950 - United States recalls all consular personnel from China.
1953 - Josip Broz Tito is elected President of Yugoslavia.
1966 - Indonesia closes its mission at United Nations.
1974 - World Football League is founded.
1975 - USSR breaks trade agreement with US.
1986 - Inicio Cerezo is sworn in as Guatemala’s first civilian president in 16 years.
1990 - A blaze sweeps through a discotheque in Saragossa, Spain, kills 43 people.
1992 - Israel opens peace talks with Jordan and resumes bargaining with Palestinians.
1993 - As many as 54 people die when a Polish ferry capsizes during a fierce storm in the Baltic Sea.
1994 - Ukraine and US sign a landmark deal on scrapping Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal.
1996 - Alvaro Arzu is sworn in as Guatemala’s new president.
1997 - A crowded public bus smashes through a metal fence and plunges 35 metres into the Nile, Egypt, killing at least 39 people.
2000 - A UN tribunal sentences five Bosnian Croats to up to 25 years in prison for killing of over 100 Bosnian Muslims.
2002 - Raed Al Karmi, leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, is killed in West Bank.
2005 - European space probe lands on Saturn’s moon Titan.
2008 - Republican Bobby Jindal, the first elected Indian-American governor in the United States, takes office in Louisiana.
2011 - Tunisian President Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali steps down after 24 years in power.
2012 - A South Korean fuel tanker sink near Jawol island, after an explosion on board, leaving five crew members dead.
2013 - Prince Saud Bin Nayef is named as governor of the oil-producing Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia.
2014 - At least 200 South Sudanese civilians are drowned in a ferry accident in the White Nile river, while fleeing fresh fighting between government forces and rebels.
HIGHLIGHT
1991
Palestinian leader Abu Eyad gunned down
Three PLO leaders were gunned down by a Palestinian infiltrator loyal to Abu Nidal. Palestine Liberation Organisation security chief Abu Eyad was killed along with the Interior Minister Hael Abdul Hamid and Abu Eyad’s aide Fakhri Al Omari in Tunis. The killings apparently carried out by a bodyguard of Abdul Hamid, were a major blow to the PLO. Tunisian security officials said Hamza Abu Zeid opened fire with two Kalashnikov machineguns at the three men at Abdul Hamid’s villa in the residential suburb of Carthage. The killer then took Abdul Hamid’s wife and daughter hostage in the house before police stormed it. They arrested Abu Zeid and freed the two women. Abu Eyad had emerged in recent years as a Palestinian elder statesman, backing Arafat’s efforts to steer the PLO on a more moderate course. With Abu Eyad’s death, only two of the five men who founded Fatah with Arafat in Kuwait in the late 1950s and early 1960s are still working alongside him.
