General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai Crown Prince and UAE Defence Minister, inaugurated in the presence of Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Information and Culture, the new premises of the Sultan Al Owais Cultural Foundation. Shaikh Mohammad unveiled the Dh60 million 10-storey building. He visited a photography exhibition and museum on the late Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais and a well-equipped library on the new premises. The UAE holds an important position in the world of Arab culture as a result of the contributions of several far-sighted, creative men, said Shaikh Mohammad at the opening ceremony. He described Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais as “a prominent UAE national poet and personality” and acknowledged his outstanding contributions to UAE culture. Also added that he was a founders of an important cultural movement, as a result of which the country holds an estimable position in the world of Arab art, literature and thought.
Other important events
1654 Ukraine joins Russia.
1679 French explorer la Salle reaches Niagara Falls.
1790 US President George Washington delivers first State of the Union address.
1912 African National Congress found in Bloemfontein.
1926 Abdul Aziz Bin Saud becomes King of Hejaz and renames it Saudi Arabia.
1930 Belgian Princess Marie Jose marries Italian crown prince Umberto.
1935 American physicist Arthur C. Hardy is granted a patent for the first Spectrophotometer.
1947 General George Marshall is nominated US Secretary of State.
1952 Jordan adopts constitution.
1959 Charles de Gaulle assumes the presidency in France, inaugurating the Fifth Republic.
1973 Soviet space mission Luna 21 is launched.
1985 American priest Lawrence Martin Jenco is abducted in Beirut.
1987 Gunners shell Beirut International Airport, setting ablaze an empty Lebanese passenger plane and random shelling kills 10 people and wounded 46
1989 British Midland Flight 092, a Boeing 737-400, crashes in England, 46 die.
1991 A commuter train run into buffers at the end of a platform at Cannon Street Station, killing two people.
1992 US President George H. W. Bush vomits and collapses at a state dinner at the Japanese Prime Minister’s residence in Tokyo.
1993 Hakija Turajlic, Deputy Prime Minister of Bosnia, is shot dead by Serbian gunmen.
1996 A cargo plane crashes into a crowded market in the centre of the Zaire capital Kinshasa, killing over 250 people.
1997 Poisonous gas leaks from a tanker truck in Lahore, Pakistan, killing 30 people.
1998 Ramzi Yousuf is sentenced to life in prison plus 240 years for masterminding the World Trade Centre Bombing in New York.
2002 US President George W. Bush signs the No Child Left Behind Act.
2006 A US Army Black Hawk helicopter crashes, killing all 12 Americans believed to be aboard.
2008 Tata Motors launches Nano, the world’s cheapest car.
2009 Leonidas Vargas, a convicted Colombian drug baron is shot dead in a Madrid hospital.
2011 77 from the 105 aboard the Iran Air died after it crash landed in the Orumiyeh City in Iran
2014 Nine people are killed as Mumbai-Dehradun Express catches fire near Dahanu railway station, India.
2015 A super-antibiotic capable teixobactin, which will wipe out everything from Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus to tuberculosis has been found.
2017 Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani dies at 82.
