Pope makes historic visit to Syria
2001 - Pope John Paul began a historic pilgrimage to Syria with an emotional plea to Israel and its Arab neighbours to turn “fear into trust” to end decades of war in the Middle East. His tour in the footsteps of St Paul the apostle, already a landmark of inter-faith unity for his groundbreaking gesture of reconciliation with the Orthodox Church in Greece, was to include the first visit by a Pope to a mosque. In his address at Damascus airport, the Pope said he hoped that, in the region, “fear will turn into trust and contempt to mutual esteem, that force will give way to dialogue, and that a genuine desire to serve the common good will prevail”. President Bashar Al Assad called on the 80-year-old Pontiff to stand by the Arabs in their struggle to regain their land and rights from Israel.
May 5
1570 - Turkey declares war on Venice for refusing to surrender Cyprus.
1821 - France’s Napoleon Bonaparte dies in exile on the island of St Helena.
1824 - British troops take over Rangoon, Myanmar.
1893 - Panic hits the New York Stock Exchange.
1936 - Italian forces occupy Addis Ababa, ending Abyssinian War.
1941 - Emperor Haile Selassie returns from exile after Ethiopia’s liberation.
1954 - British athlete Roger Bannister becomes the first person to run a mile in under four minutes.
1955 - Allies restore the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany and it joins Nato.
1963 - Algeria’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Khemisti dies three weeks after being shot by an assassin.
1965 - First large US military units arrive in Vietnam.
1980 - A six-day siege of the Iranian embassy in London ends in explosions, gunfire and bloodshed.
1986 - Syrian President Hafez Al Assad pays his first visit to Jordan in nine years.
1994 - North and South Yemen clash, starting a civil war.
2002 - Fidel Castro releases from prison one of Cuba’s most prominent dissidents, Vladimiro Roca.
2005 - British Prime Minister Tony Blair wins third term in national election.
2006 - 16-year-old American Michelle Wie becomes the first woman to make the cut in the Men’s US Open in 61 years after winning SK Telecom Open.
2007 - Bahrain becomes sole owner of Gulf Air after Oman pulls out.
2014 - Libya’s interim parliament names businessman Ahmad Matig as prime minister.
