Today in History
October 26
1814 The British governor general of India declares war on Gurkhas of Nepal.
1863 The Football Association (FA) is founded in England.
1917 Brazil declares war against Germany during the First World War.
1922 Italian government resigns under pressure from fascists and Benito Mussolini.
1936 The first electric generator at Hoover Dam goes into full operation.
1942 US aircraft carrier Hornet is sunk after being hit by Japanese aircraft in the Solomon Islands battle.
1950 Mother Teresa founds her Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, India.
1955 Republic of South Vietnam is proclaimed under Ngo Dinh Diem.
1959 Rawalpindi is chosen as provisional capital of Pakistan.
1976 Trinidad and Tobago becomes a republic.
1967 Shah of Iran crowns himself Emperor of Iran.
1975 Anwar Sadat becomes the first Egyptian president to pay an official visit to the United States.
1979 South Korea’s President Park Chung-hee is killed by his friend Kim Jae-kyu during an ‘accidental clash’.
1987 US President Ronald Reagan announces an embargo on all US imports from Iran.
1994 Jordan and Israel sign a peace treaty ending 46 years of conflict.
1997 Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak opens a new canal to carry Nile water to irrigate the arid Sinai peninsula.
1999 Britain’s House of Lords votes to end the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in Britain’s upper chamber of Parliament.
2000 Laurent Gbagbo becomes President of the Ivory Coast.
2001 US President George W. Bush signs a sweeping anti-terrorism bill into law.
2002 Russian special forces, using gas to knock out Chechen guerrillas, storm a Moscow theatre in a dawn raid that left up to 119 hostages dead.
2007 Former Philippines president Joseph Estrada walks free after six and a half years of detention.
2008 Emirates become the first Middle East carrier to launch a non-stop flight to Los Angeles.
2010 Iran announces it has begun loading fuel into the core of its first nuclear power plant.
2012 Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s four-year prison term for tax fraud is cut to one year.
2014 President Dilma Rousseff wins the Brazil presidential elections.
HIGHLIGHT
UN salutes Mother Teresa
1985
From the podium of the General Assembly, Mother Teresa of Calcutta made a moving plea for peace, and denounced abortion as “terrible murder.” Speaking two days after the 40th anniversary celebrations, the 75-year-old nun who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with India’s poor said it is a contradiction to be frightened about nuclear war but not of aborting an unborn child. Abortion is the “the greatest destroyer of peace,” she said, and “terrible murder.” Mother Teresa was at the United Nations to view the debut of a film about her work, “Mother Teresa.” After the film, Mother Teresa was introduced by UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar. “No colour, no nationality should come between us. If we really want peace let us make a strong resolution. We will not allow a single child to live without love...and remove abortion from our nation” she said.
