Hong Kong karaoke club fire claims 15
1997 - A fire in a karaoke club in Hong Kong killed 15 people and police said it may have been caused by a petrol bomb. They said the deaths were being investigated as homicides. Most of the casualties in the blaze were young people. The dead were aged 16 to 42. Thirteen injured were being treated in hospital and two were on the critical list. Police said a man was helping with their enquiries 12 hours after the inferno gutted the club in the territory’s second major fire tragedy in as many months. Police investigators were treating the case as arson and homicide. The blaze raced through the Top One karaoke bar in the Tsimshatsui district of Hong Kong’s Kowloon peninsula shortly before dawn and took firefighters more than an hour to quell. There were about 100 people in the building at the time.
January 25
1802 - Napoleon Bonaparte becomes president of the Italian Republic.
1915 - Alexander Graham Bell inaugurates US transcontinental telephone service.
1924 - First Winter Olympic games open in Chamonix, France.
1942 - Thailand, allied to Japan, declares war on Britain and the US.
1944 - Battle for Cassino begins in Italy during the Second World War.
1955 - The Soviet Union ends its state of war with Germany.
1961 - US President John F. Kennedy in first presidential news conference carried live on radio and TV.
1971 - Himachal Pradesh becomes 18th Indian state.
1975 - Shaikh Mujibur Rahman abolishes parliamentary rule in Bangladesh and assumes absolute powers as president.
1987 - West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl wins a second term.
1997 - Martina Hingis claims her first Grand Slam championship and becomes the youngest winner of a major title in 110 years.
1999 - Prince Abdullah Bin Hussain is named crown prince of Jordan.
2000 - Thai commandos rescue 700 hostages from a besieged hospital in a dawn strike, killing 10 gunmen.
2001 - A plane carrying tourists to the Caribbean island of Margarita crashes into a shantytown in Venezuela shortly after take-off, killing all 24 people aboard.
2002 - India test-fires an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
2006 - Palestinian group Hamas wins landslide victory in parliamentary elections.
2008 - A car bomb rips through eastern Beirut, killing Lebanon’s top anti-terrorism investigator.
2009 - The Sri Lankan government captures the rebels’ last major stronghold of Mullaittivu.
2010 - Saddam Hussain’s right-hand man Ali Hassan Al Majid, known as ‘Chemical Ali’, is hanged in Baghdad.
2011 - In Egypt, tens of thousands of people participate in a ‘day of revolt’ to protest against the government.
2012 - A massive fire guts the 25-storey Al Baker Tower 4 in Sharjah’s Al Taawun area, 125 families are left homeless.
2015 - Greek singer Demis Roussos dies in Athens.
