Emirates’ first two aircraft arrive in Dubai
1985 - Dubai’s new national airline, Emirates, plans to expand services to cover a number of new destinations in the Gulf and Middle East, Asia and Europe, Shaikh Ahmad Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of the airline, said. Shaikh Ahmad, who was talking to newsmen after signing an agreement with PIA Director Corporate Planning, Syed Ajaz Ali, providing for wet-leasing two aircraft for the Dubai carrier, said the Emirates fleet would also be expanded progressively. The signing of the lease agreement followed the arrival of one of the two aircraft, a Boeing 737-300, at the Dubai International Airport. Shaikh Ahmad said the two aircraft would help launch commercial operations. Initially, the airline would operate services to Karachi, Bombay and Delhi.
October 21
1790 - The Tricolour is chosen as the official flag of France.
1879 - American inventor Thomas A. Edison demonstrates the first electric lamp.
1913 - The Shubert Theatre opens in New York City.
1914 - Battle of Warsaw ends with German defeat.
1923 - The world’s first planetarium projector opens at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany.
1945 - Argentine politician Juan Peron marries actress Eva Duarte.
1960 - The first British nuclear submarine, Dreadnought, is launched at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.
1966 - More than 140 people, mostly children, are killed when a coal waste landslide engulfs a school and several houses in south Wales.
1969 - Willy Brandt is elected Chancellor of West Germany.
1989 - A Honduran jet breaks apart in flight and crashes outside Tegucigalpa, killing at least 120 people.
1991 - Lebanese kidnappers free American Jesse Turner after holding him hostage for nearly five years.
1993 - Gunmen assassinate Assad Saftawi, a leading member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement in Gaza Strip.
2004 - Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono sworn in as Indonesian President.
2007 - A Soyuz craft with two Russian cosmonauts and a Malaysian aboard undocks from the international space station for the return to Earth.
2009 - A Khartoum-bound cargo plane crash-lands two minutes after take off from Sharjah Airport, killing all six crew members.
2014 - South African Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius sentenced to five years for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
