March 20
1784 Holland cedes Negapatama and Madras, India, to Britain.
1896 Marines land in Nicaragua to protect US citizens in the wake of a revolution.
1899 Martha M. Place becomes the first woman to be executed in the electric chair in the US.
1900 Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla receives a patent for the wireless transmission of electricity.
1902 American inventor Nathan Stubblefield demonstrates the first mobile radio telephone.
1916 Allies agree on partition of Turkey.
1920 Swiss automaker Bugatti delivers its first luxury car.
1940 Paul Reynaud becomes French prime minister.
1956 Tunisia gains independence from France.
1964 The European Space Research Organisation is established in Paris, France.
1972 Nineteen mountain climbers on Japan’s Mount Fuji are killed in avalanche.
1976 Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst is convicted of armed robbery.
1986 Jacques Chirac becomes French Prime Minister.
1987 Italian air force Gen. Livio Giorgieri is shot dead by two youths on motorcycle
1990 Namibia becomes independent, marking the end of 75 years of South African rule.
1991 Khaleda Zia is elected as prime minister of Bangladesh.
1994 Tunisians elect first multiparty parliament.
1995 In Tokyo, 12 people are killed, more than 5,500 others sickened when packages containing the poisonous gas leak on five subway trains.
1998 Africa’s Trans-Kalahari Highway connecting Atlantic and Indian oceans open.
1999 Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones make the first non-stop hot-air balloon flight around the world.
2000 President Abdou Diouf concedes defeat in Senegalese elections.
2003 US and its allies invade Iraq from Kuwait.
2007 Fire engulfs a nursing home in Kamyshevatskaya, a small town in south Russia, killing 62 frail and elderly residents.
2008 Emirates become the first airline to commercially launch inflight mobile telephone service.
2011 At least seven miners are killed and 41 others trapped after explosions triggered a collapse in a coal mine at Sorange district in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
2013 Bangladeshi President Zillur Rahman is died at the age 85.
2014 Seven Taliban suicide attackers storm a police station in Jalalabad city, Afghanistan, killing 10 policemen.
HIGHLIGHT
2001
Brazil’s giant oil rig sinks
An oil rig billed as the world’s largest sank in the South Atlantic, and state oil company Petrobras raced to prevent 1.5 million litres of crude and diesel fuel still aboard from spilling into the sea. The 40-storey-tall rig, 120km off the Brazilian coast, was ravaged by explosions and fire that killed at least two workers. Eight others were still missing and presumed dead. The explosion knocked out a supporting pillar, and the platform tilted and sank slowly into the sea off the coast of Macae. Chief Executive Henri Philippe Reichstul said the oil and gas wells were sealed before the rig was evacuated, but the danger was that the oil still aboard could spill. Petrobras had 13 ships stationed around the stricken rig with floating oil barriers to contain an eventual spill. The rig, built in Italy and later modified in Canada, was the top producer in the oil-rich Campos Basin, which accounts for most of the 1.5 million barrels of oil Brazil produced daily.
