Reforms and relief in South Africa
1992 - White South Africans gave President F.W. de Klerk’s reforms a resounding endorsement with a landslide “yes” vote in the referendum on a new democratic constitution and power-sharing with blacks. A jubilant de Klerk, who had taken a high-risk gamble in calling the referendum in the face of growing support for the right-wing, declared that the result had “finally closed the chapter on apartheid”. The size of the turnout was about 85 per cent of the 3.2 million white voters and 68 per cent voted “Yes” for continued negotiations with the blacks majority. De Klerk appeared before an enthusiastic crowd on the steps of his Cape Town residence to acknowledge victory and declare apartheid dead and buried.
March 18
1909 - Einar Dessau of Denmark uses a shortwave transmitter.
1913 - Greece’s King George I is assassinated in Salonika.
1937 - A gas explosion at a school in New London, Texas, kills more than 400 people.
1949 - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is formed.
1959 - US President Dwight Eisenhower signs the Hawaii statehood bill.
1965 - Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov becomes the first person to walk in space.
1969 - US President Richard Nixon orders secret bombing of Cambodia.
1970 - Cambodia’s Prince Norodom Sihanouk is deposed as chief of state while he is on a visit to Moscow.
1986 - Michele Sindona, former Vatican financial adviser, gets a life sentence for bank fraud.
1993 - Former Pakistan prime minister Mohammad Khan Junejo dies of a heart attack in the US.
1994 - Bosnia and Croatia sign a federation accord.
1996 - At least 150 people are killed in a deadly fire at a disco club in suburban Manila.
1999 - The Kosovo peace talks collapse after ethnic Albanian delegates unilaterally sign a peace accord that defiant Serbs reject.
2003 - The US invades Iraq after Saddam Hussain rejected an ultimatum to quit.
2007 - Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer dies in Jamaica during the cricket World Cup.
2008 - Emirates becomes the first airline to launch an inflight mobile telephone service.
2010 - Sudan’s government and a Darfur rebel group, the Liberation and Justice Movement, signs a framework peace deal.
2012 - Mitt Romney is elected President of Puerto Rico.
