2008 India’s Tata Motors Ltd announced a $2.3 billion (Dh8.45 billion) deal to buy Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Co, in a transaction that gives the emerging Indian automaker a model line-up ranging from ultra-cheap to high-end luxury. For Tata, which plans to launch the ultra-cheap $2,500 Nano or ‘People’s Car’, the addition of the profitable Land Rover brand provides an edge against its Indian rival, Mahindra & Mahindra, which had also pursued a deal with Ford. Ford, for its part, gets to shed the money-losing Jaguar brand and gains a cash infusion at a time when the United States market is slumping and it is attempting to bounce back from combined losses of more than $15 billion over the past two years.
Other important events:
1872 Thomas J Martin patents the fire extinguisher.
1881 Romania becomes a monarchy, and King Carol I is proclaimed king.
1885 The Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co, forerunner of Eastman Kodak, manufactures the first commercial motion picture film.
1895 Japan occupies the Pescadores Islands in Formosa Strait.
1913 More than 1,400 perish in floods in the US states of Ohio, Indiana and Texas.
1931 A treaty of friendship is signed between Iraq and the Transjordan.
1951 The United States Air Force flag officially adopted by President Harry S. Truman.
1953 American Dr Jonas E. Salk unveils new polio vaccine.
1971 Bangladesh declares its independence.
1979 Egypt and Israel sign the Camp David peace treaty at the White House.
1987 Tunisia breaks off diplomatic relations with Iran.
1990 Police fire on demonstrators in Sebokeng, South Africa, killing 11 people and wounding hundreds.
1991 Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay sign the Treaty of Asuncion, launching the Southern Cone Common Market
1993 UN Security Council votes to send 30,000 troops to Somalia, the largest and most expensive peacekeeping operation till date.
1997 The bodies of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult who committed suicide are found inside a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California.
2000 The Dubai Financial Market officially opens.
2001 A boarding school fire in Kenya kills 58 boys and seriously injures 28 others.
2005 A land mine explodes under a US vehicle in Kabul, killing four soldiers in the deadliest incident for American troops in Afghanistan.
2007 Northern Ireland’s main Protestant and Catholic parties agreed to start sharing power.
2008 Kholoud Ahmad Jua’an Al Daheri becomes the UAE’s first woman judge.
2009 The prime minister of the Czech Republic Mirek Topolanek formally resigns.
2012 Hollywood director James Cameron dives to the Earth’s deepest point in a specially designed submarine, making him the first man to travel alone to the depths of the Mariana Trench.
2013 Bahujan Samaj Party leader Deepak Bhardwaj is shot dead in a south Delhi farmhouse.
2014 North Korea test-fires two medium-range ballistic missiles.
2015 Warplanes from an Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia strike Al Houthi rebels in Yemen.
