1998 - One of Britain’s most famous cattle markets closed after mad cow disease helped end 1,000 years of trading in Banbury. Banbury market in Oxfordshire, northwest of London, is one of Britain’s oldest with a history stretching back to the Domesday Book, a record of the lands of England made in 1086 by order of William the Conqueror. Once the biggest in Britain, the market has occupied its current site since the mid-1920s. Jim Watson, chairman of the Midland Marts in Banbury said, other British livestock markets were heading for closure as more farmers switched to crops from cattle because of falling beef prices.
Other important events
1814 - The Restoration monarchy is established in France.
1859 - Austrians are defeated at Magenta by French, who free Milan in Italy.
1868 - Pieter Philip van Bosse becomes Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
1896 - Henry Ford makes a successful pre-dawn test run of his horseless carriage, called a quadricycle, through the streets of Detroit.
1912 - Massachusetts passes the first minimum-wage law in the United States.
1917 - The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded.
1943 - President Ramón Castillo is ousted and Arturo Rawson declared himself president in the military coup in Argentina.
1970 - Kingdom of Tonga in Pacific becomes member of British Commonwealth.
1974 - Sally D. Murphy becomes the first female helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army
1979 - South African President John Vorster resigns amid scandal.
1982 - The first secretary of the Kuwaiti Embassy in India, Mustafa Al Marzook, is shot dead in his South Delhi residence.
1989 - Chinese army troops storm Tiananmen Square, Beijing to crush the pro-democracy movement.
1992 - Russia and other former Soviet republics pledge to slash tanks and other weapons in a landmark arms control accord.
1996 - Europe’s Ariane-5 rocket veer off course 37 seconds into its maiden flight and is blown up by ground controllers.
1998 - A three-week hostage drama in Colombia ends when a right-wing paramilitary group announces that it has killed 25 people abducted from an oil-refining city.
2004 - Gyanendra, the last king of Nepal, ascends the throne after the massacre in Royal Palace.
2005 - The UAE is declared one of the most competitive nations in the world.
2007 - Former Liberian President Charles Taylor boycotts opening of his war crimes trial in The Hague.
2008 - Barack Obama makes history by becoming the first black presidential nominee of a major US party.
2010 - British environmentalist Roz Savage has become the first woman to row alone across the Pacific Ocean after finishing a nearly 13,000km journey.
2011 - Li Na makes history at the French Open, becoming the first player from China to win a Grand Slam singles title.
2014 - Heathrow’s refurbished Terminal 2 reopens in London.
2016 - Boxing legend Muhammad Ali dies at the age of 74.
