Liverpool completed an unprecedented treble in Dortmund when an own goal from Alaves’ Delfi Geli gave the English giants victory in the greatest Uefa Cup final of all time. Geli headed in a free-kick from ageless Scot Gary McAllister on 117 minutes to hand Liverpool an astonishing 5-4 triumph in a drama-filled match that also saw two Alaves players sent off. The triumph for Gerard Houllier’s men at the Westfalenstadion sealed a historic hat-trick of trophies for the Anfield giants, following their successful FA Cup and League Cup campaigns earlier this season. It also wrote another epic chapter in Liverpool’s rich European history following their glory days of the 1970s and 1980s. “We played for immortality today because people will remember this match,” a delighted Houllier said after the win, Liverpool’s first triumph in Europe since 1984. Never in the history of the Uefa Cup and Fairs Cup, dating back to its start in 1958, have nine goals been scored in a single match of the final.
Other important events:
1862 Frenchman Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir builds the first gas-fuelled internal combustion engine.
1868 US Senate fails to impeach President Andrew Johnson by a single vote.
1871 British Columbia, a British colony, becomes a province of Canada.
1929 The first Academy Awards are presented during a banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
1932 Japan’s Premier Tsuyoshi Inukai is assassinated in Tokyo.
1941 The Icelandic parliament ends treaty with Denmark, proclaims independence.
1961 Major General Park Chung-hee stages a military coup in South Korea.
1974 Josip Broz Tito becomes president-for-life of Yugoslavia.
1975 Japan’s Junko Tabei becomes first woman to climb Mount Everest.
1980 Japanese Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira calls a snap general election after his government collapses in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence.
1989 Lebanese Grand Mufti Shaikh Hassan Khalid is killed in a car bomb blast.
1991 Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first British monarch to address the US Congress.
1992 A special governing panel fires Azerbaijani President Ayaz Mutalibov, a former communist.
1994 Scotland Yard, for the first time, approves a plan to allow some London police officers to openly carry firearms.
1996 Atal Bihari Vajpayee sworn in as the new Indian prime minister.
1997 Zaire’s ailing president, Mobutu Sese Seko steps down ending over three decades of highly personalised rule.
1999 Iranian President Mohammad Khatami makes a historic visit to Saudi Arabia.
2000 The Grand National Assembly elects Ahmet Necdet Sezer as the tenth President of Turkey.
2003 Twenty-nine people are killed and about 100 others injured in five nearly simultaneous suicide bombings in Casablanca, Morocco’.
2005 Kuwaiti women are granted the right to vote and contest elections.
2007 Nicolas Sarkozy becomes president of France.
2009 Kuwait elects four women members of parliament for the first time in nation’s history.
2010 England wins ICC Cricket World Twenty20 Cup after beating Australia in the final.
2011 The RAK Maritime City is launched in Ras Al Khaimah.
2013 Indian actor Sanjay Dutt surrenders before a court in Mumbai, he has been sentenced to five years in prison.
2014 Narendra Modi led Bharatiya Janata Party single-handedly win majority in the national elections.
2015 Egypt court sentences ex-President Mohammad Mursi to death in 2011 jail break case.
