Today in History
November 28
1821 Panama declares itself independent of Spain and joins the Republic of Colombia.
1905 Sinn Fein Party, part of the Irish republican movement, is founded in Dublin, Ireland.
1912 Albanian patriot Ismail Quemali proclaims independence from Ottoman rule and creates first-ever Albanian government.
1919 Lady Astor is elected first woman member of Britain’s parliament.
1922 Six former ministers of Greece are executed.
1942 Almost 500 people perish in a fire that destroys the Coconut Grove nightclub in Boston, Massachusetts.
1944 Albania is liberated from German occupation.
1958 Chad becomes an autonomous republic within the French community.
1960 Mauritania becomes an independent republic, separating from France.
1967 Communist China is turned down for admission to the United Nations for the 18th time.
1971 Jordan’s Prime Minister Wasfi Tell is assassinated while attending an Arab conference in Cairo, Egypt.
1975 East Timor declares its independence from Portugal.
1987 South African Airways jet plane with 159 people aboard crashes in Indian Ocean near Mauritius.
1989 Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi resigns after election defeat.
1990 Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew steps down after 31 years in power.
1990 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher formally resigns, and John
Major takes over.
1994 Norwegians reject European Union membership.
1995 Nato and Russia reach a historic deal to pave the way for full Russian participation in peace mission to Bosnia.
1996 UAE signs a Defence Cooperation Agreement with Britain.
1997 Fighting breaks out among President Laurent Kabila’s soldiers in Kinshasa, Congo.
1999 Aaron Baddeley becomes the first amateur in 39 years and the youngest in history to win the Australian Golf Open at Royal Sydney.
2000 Norway’s King Harald opens the world’s longest road tunnel in Laerdal, Norway
2004 Jordan’s King Abdullah stripped his half-brother and heir apparent of his title as crown prince.
2001 Enron Corp collapses after its credit is downgraded to junk-bond status.
2007 President Pervez Musharraf steps down as Pakistan’s military commander.
2009 An over loaded sinks in southern Bangladesh, killing 37 people.
2012 A Saudi diplomat, Khalid Al Enizi, a military attache at the Saudi embassy is killed in Sana’a, Yemen.
2013 Italian former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is evicted from parliament.
2014 Lebanese nationalist poet Saeed Aql died at the age of 102.
HIGHLIGHT
1995
Deira City Centre opens
Deira City Centre, one of the projects of Majid Al Futtaim Group and the largest of its kind in the region, is opened. Built with an initial cost of about Dh300 million, due to double next year when additional infrastructure including a hotel will be in place, the centre’s owners hope that it will take the city by storm. Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and UAE Minister of Finance and Industry, inaugurated the centre, which offers customers the convenience of all-day shopping. The centre’s design is impressive. The tents, which are made from DuPont Teflon ad manufactured in Germany, provide natural light sufficiently shaded to create a pleasant atmosphere. The architecture is created by Seattle-based Callison. The shopping mall increases the number of shopping malls in Dubai to more than 15. With more than 170 international and local outlets, the centre will be the first in the area to integrate major international anchor stores such as the European ‘hypermarket’ Continent, the South African department store Woolworths and Ikea, the world’s largest home furniture retailer.
