November 4, 1995: Schlesser wins UAE Desert Challenge title

Schlesser wins UAE Desert Challenge title

1995 - Frenchman Jean-Louis Schlesser came from behind to retain his 1995 UAE Marlboro Desert Challenge Championship. The leader and top seed for three days running, Bruno Saby of France crashed out in dramatic style on the last leg. When the rally drove to the finish line at the Dubai Creek Park, defending champion, Schlesser jumped out of his specially designed ‘Schlesser Original one-seater buggy’. The navigation was very difficult,” he said. When the day began with Saby holding an overall lead of 32 minutes and 40 seconds, the favourite was already having problems reading the best way through the dunes when tragedy struck. Schlesser, who was stepping on the gas full throttle to slice into Saby’s time difference, was leading at that stage.

November 4

1890 - The world’s first electric-powered underground railway opens in London, England.

1921 - Japan’s Premier Takashi Hara is assassinated.

1922 - British archaeologist Howard Carter discovers the entrance to King Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt.

1924 - Stanley Baldwin is elected as British Prime Minister.

1944 - Allies announce that Greece has been liberated from German Nazis in the Second World War.

1952 - Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected US President.

1956 - Soviet troops invade Hungary.

1964 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is exiled from Iran.

1979 - Students seize US Embassy in Tehran and take diplomats hostage for 444 days, demanding the ousted Shah of Iran as ransom.

1991 - Former first lady Imelda Marcos returns to the Philippines after more than five years in exile.

1995 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.

1999 - Russia opens the gates to more than a thousand frightened refugees who had been trapped in a war zone in Chechnya.

2000 - Dubai Media City is launched.

2008 - Barack Obama is elected the first black President of the United States.

2011 - Bomb and gun attacks targeting police stations and churches in the northeastern Nigerian city of Damaturu, kills 63 people.

2012 - China’s disgraced politician Bo Xilai is expelled from the Communist Party.

2014 - Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, is sworn in as new head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in Ukraine.