1992 - Former West German chancellor Willy Brandt — on exile from Nazism, who later became one of the world’s leading statesmen — died aged 78 after a long battle with cancer. The gravel-voiced Social Democrat, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his “Ostpolitik” of detente with Eastern Europe, died at his home near Bonn. He had been ill for months. Germans paid tribute to the Social Democratic leader, one of the giants of modern European history who helped rehabilitate Germany internationally after the horrors of Nazism and the Second World War. Leaders of his Social Democratic party wept as they honoured him at a party meeting and parliamentary speaker Rita Suessmuth, her voice breaking with emotion, read a eulogy at a hushed session.
Other important events
1912 - Montenegro declares war on Turkey.
1932 - The Indian Air Force is established.
1952 - 112 people are killed as three trains crash at Harrow and Wealdstone station, a north-west suburb of London.
1954 - Communist Vietnamese forces occupy Hanoi.
1967 - Che Guevara, a Marxist revolutionary, is captured.
1980 - Soviets and Syria sign a treaty to help establish “real and just peace” in the Middle East.
1982 - Poland bans Solidarity and all labour unions.
1975 - Heavy fighting in Beirut and northern Lebanon kills at least 25 people.
1990 - Britain joins the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
1992 - West Indian poet Derek Walcott wins Nobel Prize for Literature.
1996 - Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat makes his first public visit to Israel.
1997 - Scientists report the Pathfinder probe’s exploration of Mars has yielded evidence that the planet was once hospitable to life.
2000 - Michael Schumacher wins Japanese Grand Prix.
2001 - An SAS airliner taking off for Denmark from Milan, Italy, hits a private jet and explodes, killing all 114 people on both planes and four people on the ground.
2002 - Pakistan conducts tests of a medium-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
2005 - A 7.5 magnitude quake kills thousands of people in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
2008 - Maldivian islanders vote in the first democratic presidential election in their nation’s history.
2009 - A suicide car bomb explodes outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing at least 17 people.
2010 - Kunduz province governor Mohammad Omar is killed in a bomb explosion at Shirkat mosque in Takhar, Afghanistan.
2012 - West Indies wins the ICC World Twenty20 cricket tournament after beating Sri Lanka in the final in Colombo.
2013 - Egypt orders authorities to remove the Muslim Brotherhood from the list of approved non-governmental organisations.
2015 - Fifa suspends Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini for 90 days.
