2002 - A major fire on a huge luxury liner being fitted out at a Japanese shipyard for Britain’s biggest cruise operator was still smouldering, some 18 hours after it broke out, shipyard officials said. The Diamond Princess cruise ship - at 113,000 tonnes one of the world’s largest luxury liners and designed to carry 3,100 people was one of two vessels under construction for P&O Princess Cruises Plc at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd shipyard in Nagasaki, southern Japan. Some 1,000 workers were on board the ship when the blaze broke out, but all escaped safely. More than 40 fire engines and fireboats were involved in fighting the blaze, and Coast Guard patrol vessels were also on hand. The Nagasaki port authority banned all ships from going within a radius of 300 metresof the Diamond Princess, Kyodo news agency said. It said the liner, 290 metres long and 41.5 metres wide, was worth about 40 billion yen ($326 million).
Other important events
1870 - Rome becomes the capital of Italy.
1889 - First Pan American Conference is held in Washington.
1919 - US President Woodrow Wilson suffers a stroke, leaving him partially paralysed.
1934 - Royal Indian Navy is formed.
1940 - HMS Empress of Britain, carrying child war refugees to Canada, is sunk during Second World War.
1941 - German army launches all-out drive against Moscow in Second World War.
1944 - Nazi troops crush the two-month-old Warsaw Uprising.
1953 - Earl Warren becomes Chief Justice of the United States.
1955 - Actress Joyce Randolph marries publisher Richard Charles
1958 - The former French colony of Guinea proclaims its independence.
1962 - Egypt sends troops to Yemen to support republicans against Saudi-backed royalists.
1967 - Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first African-American justice of the US Supreme Court.
1982 - A massive bomb blast in the central square of Tehran leaves at least 60 dead.
1984 - President His Highness Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan lays the foundation stone of the Mareb dam in Yemen.
1985 - American actor Rock Hudson dies from Aids.
1987 - Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba appoints Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali as Prime Minister.
1988 - Pakistan Supreme Court lifts ban on political parties participating in elections.
1990 - A hijacked Chinese jet smashes into two parked aircraft as it tries to land at Canton airport, killing 127 people.
1996 - Yugoslavia broadly welcomed the UN’s decision to end sanctions imposed in 1992.
1997 - Canada recalls ambassador to Israel to protest use of forged Canadian passports by suspected Israeli agents.
1998 - A popular Mongolian minister, Sanjaasuregiin Zorig, is slain.
1999 - Rebels release some 40 diplomats and foreigners after taking them hostage at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok.
2004 - Sete Gibernau of Italy won the inaugural Grand Prix of Qatar.
2006 - A gunman storms an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, killing five girls before committing suicide.
2007 - North and South Korean leaders meet in Pyongyang for a historic summit.
2010 - A passenger train slams into the back of another train in Indonesia, killing at least 36 people.
2013 - South Korea and the US sign a strategic pact to prevent a North Korean nuclear attack.
2015 - At least 18 people are killed in a double bomb attack in Abuja, Nigeria.
