July 7, 1985
Prince Abdullah rescues Al Hajri
Jordan’s Prince Abdullah (above left) was the hero of a dramatic desert rescue during practice for the Rothmans Jordan Rally. He saved his rallying mentor and Middle East champion Saeed Al Hajri (above right) from the desert. Al Hajri and navigator John Spiller were out making notes of the route for the rally, scheduled to start after three days, when their practice car ran out of petrol. “A stone must have punctured the fuel tank and we did not have a lot of water with us and we could have been in serious trouble if Prince Abdullah had not come along,” said Al Hajri. Prince Abdullah, who is competing in the rally with co-driver Amr Bilbeisi, was luckily practising over the same part of the route and was able to give Al Hajri enough fuel to get him back to the highway.
1807 France, Russia and Prussia sign Peace of Tilsit.
1815 Allied forces enter Paris following Napoleon Bonaparte’s abdication.
1865 Mary Surrati becomes the first woman to be executed in the US for her alleged role as conspirator in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
1898 United States annexes Hawaii.
1923 British watch repairer John Harwood patents the self-winding watch.
1925 South Africa recognises Afrikaans as an official language, along with English and Dutch.
1937 Japanese and Chinese troops clash near Marco Polo Bridge, Beijing.
1960 Belgium sends troops to the newly independent Congo.
1981 Arizona Judge Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first female justice in the US Supreme Court.
1985 Boris Becker, 17, becomes the youngest Wimbledon champion in the men’s singles final.
1987 At least 46 Hindus are killed in India in two attacks on buses by suspected Sikh terrorists.
1990 Martina Navratilova wins a record ninth women’s singles title at Wimbledon.
1991 Jordan announces an end to martial law in force since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
1994 Yemen’s two-month civil war ends when northern troops overrun the southern capital.
1997 Britain’s House of Lords backs a bill that would give princesses equal rights with princes in succession to the throne.
1998 Nigeria’s most prominent political prisoner, Moshood Abiola, dies of an apparent heart attack.
2002 At least 34 miners die when a fire breaks out in a coal mine in eastern Ukraine.
2003 Delegates hold the inaugural session of a new Baghdad city council.
2005 A string of rush-hour explosions tears into at least three London subway trains and a double-decker bus, killing 52 people.
2007 A suicide truck bomber blasts a Shiite town north of Baghdad, killing more than 100 people.
2011 Manchester City signs a comprehensive 10-year partnership deal with the UAE’s national airline, Etihad.
2012 Libyan people voted for the first time in 60 years.
2013 Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel wins the German Formula One Grand Prix for the first time.
2014 Former Georgian president and former foreign minister of Soviet Union Eduard Shevardnadze dies at the age of 86.
