October 31, 2000: Space odyssey begins

2000 - A 21st century space odyssey began as two Russians and an American blasted off for the International Space Station to become the first crew to live in the orbiting complex. US astronaut William Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalyov and Yury Gidzenko rocketed off onboard a Soyuz craft from this Central Asian cosmodrome for a four-month stint on the space station.

The three astronauts will remain on the space station until next February when a replacement crew arrive. The ISS, a giant floating laboratory due to be fully completed by 2005 to 2006 at a cost of $60 billion (Dh220.68 billion ) to $100 billion, will be the biggest man-made structure in space and visible from Earth. Applause rang out among a gathering of Nasa and Russian officials.

1731 - Expulsion of Protestants from Salzburg, Austria, begins.

1864 - Nevada becomes the 36th state of the United States.

1925 - Greek army invades Bulgaria.

1952 - US explode the first hydrogen bomb at the Elugelab Atoll.

1953 - Floods in Bihar state of India leave two million people homeless.

1961 - Cloud of radioactive debris moves across central Siberia after Soviets explode what is called biggest man-made nuclear bomb.

1967 - Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Thieu takes oath as first president of South Vietnam’s second republic.

1968 - US President Lyndon B. Johnson orders a halt to all US bombing of North Vietnam, saying he hopes for fruitful peace negotiations.

1975 - Indian music composer and singer S.D. Burman dies.

1984 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards.

1987 Syrian Prime Minister Abdul Rauf Al Kasm resigns.

1989 - Turkish parliament elects Prime Minister Turgut Ozal as first civilian president in three decades.

1991 - Zambia holds its first multi-party elections, with Frederick Chiluba beating independence leader and first president Kenneth Kaunda.

1992 - Five American nuns in Liberia are shot to death near the capital Monrovia. The killings are blamed on rebels loyal to Charles Taylor.

1996 - A Brazilian jetliner crashes into a residential neighbourhood in Sao Paulo shortly after takeoff, killing all 96 people on board and five on the ground.

1999 - An EgyptAir jetliner with 217 people on board plunges into the ocean off Nantucket Island en route from New York to Cairo

2003 - Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad resigns after 22 years as Malaysia’s leader.

2008 - US President George W. Bush signs an executive order restoring the Libyan government’s immunity from terror.

2010 - Dilma Rousseff is elected as the new President and the first woman leader of Brazil.

2011 -Palestine wins its greatest international endorsement yet, full membership in Unesco.

2012 - Argentina lowers its voting age to 16 from 18.

2015 - A Russian charter plane carrying 224 people crashes in a mountainous part of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing everyone on board.