Juventus won the European Cup final when they beat holders Ajax Amsterdam 4-2 in a penalty shoot-out on a night of high drama. The teams had fought to a 1-1 draw after 120 minutes of a largely entertaining, lively match that could have gone either way, but eventually swung towards Juventus, who won Europe’s premier club prize for the second time. Juventus had won the trophy for the first time in 1985. Juventus scored from all four penalties with Ciro Ferrara, Gianluca Pessotto, Michele Padovano and Vladimir Jugovic firing home from the spot. Edgar Davids missed Ajax’s first penalty, and after Jiri Litmanen and Arnold Scholten scored, a miss by Sonny Silooy meant Juventus would win if Jugovic converted. And Jugovic made no mistake.
Other important events:
1819 The American steamboat Savannah makes its first trans-Atlantic crossing.
1822 US and Korea sign treaty of peace and friendship.
1840 Transportation of British convicts to New South Wales officially ends.
1867 Canada becomes the first dominion of the British Empire.
1868 The ‘Great Train Robbery’ takes place near Marshfield, Indiana, led by Frank Reno.
1914 Britain acquires control of oil properties in Gulf from Anglo-Arabian Oil Company.
1915 Three passenger train collide due to signaling error at Quintinshill, Scotland, killing 226 people.
1936 Aer Lingus, Ireland’s national airline, begin operating.
1939 Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini sign ‘Pact of Steel’.
1947 The Truman Doctrine is enacted as Congress appropriates military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey.
1972 Ceylon becomes Republic of Sri Lanka as its Constitution is ratified.
1975 Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) is expelled from the Olympics because of its racial policies.
1979 Canadians elect conservative Joseph Clark to replace Pierre Trudeau.
1979 Hungary’s ruling Communist Party elect 57-year-old Prime Minister Karoly Grosz to succeed Janos Kadar as general secretary.
1985 A car bomb explodes in a Beirut suburb, killing 60 people and wounding 190 others.
1989 India successfully test-fires its first medium-range surface-to-surface missile Agni.
1990 North Yemen and South Yemen merge to form Republic of Yemen.
1993 Cambodians vote in first multiparty elections in 21 years.
1994 Rwandan rebels capture the government army barracks in the capital Kigali.
1996 The second powerful bomb kills at least 14 people on a bus in of Rajasthan, India.
1999 Former Sudanese dictator Gaafar Nimeiri returns home from 14 years in exile.
2003 United Nations votes to lift crippling sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990.
2005 The candidate of Mongolia’s former communist ruling party, Nambariin Enkhbayar, wins the country’s presidential election
2010 An Air India Express plane from Dubai crash lands in Mangalore, India, killing 158.
2011 Defending world champion Sebastian Vettel wins the title in the Spanish Grand Prix.
2013 Dubai launches the Mobile Government initiative marking a new era in the UAE’s development march.
2014 Thailand’s military seizes power in a bloodless coup, dissolving the government.
2015 A suicide attacker detonates a bomb at a mosque in Saudi Arabia, killing at least 19 people and wounding several others.
