1990: Emotional start of Asian Games in Beijing
Arab nations transformed the Eleventh Asian Games opening ceremony in Beijing into a dramatic show of solidarity for Kuwait and an emotional farewell for the murdered president of the Olympic Council of Asia. An emotional tribute to the former Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) president Shaikh Fahd Al Ahmad Al Sabah of Kuwait, who was gunned down during the Iraqi invasion of his country on August 2. Kuwaiti athletes wore black armbands for the march-past in memory of the Shaikh and their own lost homeland reduced. Athletes and officials from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, brandishing Kuwaiti flags and cheering and waving, marched into the stadium in an emphatic display of Arab solidarity behind the homeless nation. OCA vice president Roy de Silva of Sri Lanka reading out the address the Shaikh had prepared before his death on the steps of the Kuwaiti royal palace. The 54-strong Kuwaiti delegation members, proudly wearing on their chests pictures of their exiled emir, Shaikh Jaber Al Ahmad Al Sabah, were given the biggest cheer, apart from hosts China.
Other important events on September 22
- 1761 Britain’s King George III and his wife, Charlotte, are crowned in Westminster Abbey.
- 1792 French Republic is proclaimed and revolutionary calendar goes into effect.
- 1893 America’s first automobile, built by bicycle makers Charles and Frank Duryea, debuts on the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts
- 1927 Slavery is abolished in Sierra Leone in Africa.
- 1949 The Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb.
- 1953 The world’s first four-level freeway interchange opens in Long Angeles, California
- 1955 Hurricane Janet, the most violent Caribbean hurricane of the season, kills 600.
- 1960 A US Marine Corps DC-6 plane en route from Japan to the Philippines crashes in the ocean 290 kilometres south of Okinawa. All 29 passengers are killed.
- 1965 A ceasefire is declared in the war between India and Pakistan, but both sides subsequently violate it.
- 1980 Iraqi tanks enter Iran, marking the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War as a full-scale conflict.
- 1986 India and Australia ties the first cricket Test at the Chepauk Stadium, Chennai.
- 1988 UAE and Egypt sign an agreement setting up a joint cooperation committee.
- 1989 Ten people are killed when an IRA bomb rips through barracks in south-east London.
- 1993 Abkhazian rebels in Georgia shoot down second passenger plane in two days, killing 80.
- 1994 Former diplomat Jaafar Abdul Rahman is formally installed as Malaysia’s new king.
- 1995 America’s Time Warner Inc. and Turner Broadcasting System Inc. announce a merger with a deal valued at $7.5 billion, creating the world’s largest media company.
- 1996 Typhoon Violet veers into the North Pacific after killing seven and setting off landslides that paralysed transportation in Japan.
- 1997 A bloody slaughter in the Algiers suburb of Baraki overnight, in which some 200 people are killed.
- 1998 Saudi Arabia expels the Afghan charge d’affaires and recalls its representative from Kabul.
- 1999 Dutch journalist Sander Thoenes is killed and two others assaulted in separate attacks in East Timor.
- 2005 Two bicycle bombs explode minutes apart in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore, killing at least six people.
- 2008 South Africa’s ruling African National Congress names its deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe as head of state.
- 2011 Former Indian cricket captain Mansour Ali Khan Pataudi dies at the age of 70.
- 2013 Twin suicide bomb blasts at a church in Kohati Gate area of Peshawar and kills more than 75 people.
- 2014 Mubarak Rashid Khamis Al Mansouri has been appointed as UAE Central Bank Governor.
