1998 - His Highness Dr Shaikh Sultan Bin Mohammad Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah, accompanied by Federico Mayor, Unesco’s Director General, unveiled a monument marking the nomination of Sharjah as the cultural capital of the Arab world for 1998. Shaikh Sultan unveiled a memorial at Al Dhaid Road, which commemorates the nomination. The Ruler expressed great pleasure for the support shown by Unesco for projects in Sharjah. He welcomed the personal participation of Mayor in the celebrations. “This monument stands as a symbol of the great cultural progress in Sharjah. It is also a reminder that Sharjah has done much to protect the environment and biological life in the region,” said Mayor.
Other important events
1802 - Washington DC is incorporated as a city.
1841 - New Zealand is formally proclaimed a British colony.
1845 - Fire kills 1,600 people in a popular theatre in Canton, China.
1913 - The first full-length Indian feature film Raja Harishchandra is released.
1937 - American writer Margaret Mitchell is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Gone with the Wind.
1947 - Japan forms a constitutional democracy.
1960 - The musical The Fantasticks opens off-Broadway, beginning a record run of nearly 42 years and 17,162 performances.
1962 - An express train crashes into the wreckage of a commuter train and a freight train, killing 163 people in Tokyo, Japan.
1963 - Martin Luther King Jr delivers his landmark speech on civil rights.
1969 - Guitar legend Jimi Hendrix is arrested in Toronto for possession of heroin.
1986 - A massive bomb rips apart an Air Lanka Lockheed L-1011 at Colombo airport minutes before takeoff for Maldives, killing 20 passengers.
2001 - United States loses its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947.
2002 - A ferry carrying hundreds of people sinks in a storm on the Meghna River in Bangladesh.
2003 - James Miller, British freelance journalist, is shot and killed by an Israeli army tank in the Gaza Strip.
2005 - Iraq’s first democratically elected government is sworn in.
2006 - An Armenian airliner carrying 113 people tumbles into the Black Sea harbour of the Russian resort of Sochi.
2007 - Sudan and Chad sign a Saudi Arabia-brokered reconciliation deal, requiring both sides to cooperate with the UN to stabilise Darfur.
2008 - Cyclone Nargis strikes Myanmar, killing at least 78,000 and leaving 56,000 others missing.
2013 - Chaudhry Zulfikar Ali, special prosecutor in the Benazir Bhutto murder case, is shot dead in Islamabad.
2016 - UAE announces a 10-year National Policy for Reading to encourage the habit of reading.
