1993: Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat said his mainstream group Fatah had approved a self-rule deal with Israel and that Israel and the PLO would exchange documents on mutual recognition very soon. “The project was approved and transferred to the other Palestinian leaderships,” he told reporters at his headquarters after three days of debate in Fatah’s central committee. “It is expected that we [Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the PLO] will sign together,” he added. Arafat said the Arab states were talking with Israel to sign other agreements simultaneously within days. Fatah Central Committee member Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) said the agreement would be discussed by Fatah’s 100-member Revolutionary Council and also by the PLO’s 18-man Executive Committee and 100-strong Central Council. Arafat, leader of both Fatah and the PLO, has been trying to sell the agreement to reluctant Fatah members.
Other important events
1781 Los Angeles is founded by Spanish settlers.
1888 American inventor George Eastman patents the Kodak camera, the first to use roll film instead of glass plates
1929 German dirigible Graf Zeppelin completes trip around world.
1939 South Africa and Canada declare war on Germany.
1956 IBM introduces the world’s first commercial hard disk drive, the 350 Disk Storage Unit.
1957 Egypt and Syria form economic union.
1971 Alaskan Airlines 727 crashes into Chilkoot Mountain, kills 109.
1990 Prime ministers of South and North Korea meet for first time.
1993 Fighting breaks out in eastern Liberia.
1998 Google, the internet search company, is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
1999 East Timor votes for independence.
2006 Stingray barb kills Australian naturalist ‘Crocodile Hunter’ Steve Irwin.
2009 A US jet drops bombs on two tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban before dawn, killing more than 70 people.
2011 Heavy rains and mudslides from powerful Typhoon Talas kill at least 15 people in Japan.
2012 A bus plunges into a ravine in the Atlas mountains of southern Morocco, killing at least 42 people.
2015 52 Emirati soldiers are martyred when their ammunition depot was targeted by a rocket in Marib province, Yemen.
