March 20
1784 Holland cedes Negapatam and Madras (now Chennai), India, to Britain.
1896 Marines land in Nicaragua to protect US citizens in the wake of a revolution.
1899 Martha M. Place becomes the first woman to be executed by the electric chair in the US.
1900 Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla receives a patent for the wireless transmission of electricity.
1902 American inventor Nathan Stubblefield demonstrates the first mobile radio telephone.
1916 Allies agree on partition of Turkey.
1920 Swiss automaker Bugatti delivers its first luxury car.
1940 Paul Reynaud becomes French Prime Minister.
1956 Tunisia gains independence from France.
1964 The European Space Research Organisation is established in Paris, France.
1972 Nineteen mountain climbers on Japan’s Mount Fuji are killed in an avalanche.
1976 Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst is convicted of armed robbery.
1977 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi loses general election in India.
1986 Jacques Chirac becomes French Prime Minister.
1987 Italian Air Force General Livio Giorgieri is shot dead by two youths on a motorcycle.
1990 Namibia becomes an independent nation, marking the end of 75 years of South African rule.
1991 Khaleda Zia is elected Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
1994 Tunisians elect first multi-party parliament.
1995 In Tokyo, 12 people are killed, more than 5,500 others sickened when packages containing poisonous gas leak on five subway trains.
1998 Africa’s Trans-Kalahari Highway connecting Atlantic and Indian oceans opens.
1999 Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones make the first non-stop hot-air balloon flight around the world.
2000 President Abdou Diouf concedes defeat in Senegalese elections.
2007 Fire engulfs a nursing home in Kamyshevatskaya, a small town in south Russia, killing 62 frail and elderly residents.
2008 Emirates becomes first airline to commercially launch inflight mobile telephone service.
2011 At least seven miners are killed and 41 others are trapped after explosions trigger a collapse in a coal mine at Sorange district in the Balochistan province of Pakistan.
2013 Bangladeshi President Zillur Rahman dies at the age of 85.
2016 Sharjah declared the Capital of Arab Press 2016 by United Arab Media Council.
2017 A plane carrying 44 people crashes at South Sudan airport.
HIGHLIGHT
2003
Second Gulf War begins
The second Gulf War started within an hour after expiry of Washington’s deadline, but contrary to expectations of a massive attack inspiring ‘shock and awe’ it began with a very small surgical hit aimed at decapitating the Iraqi leadership. As day one of hostilities progressed it became clear that the initial strategy of the US and its allies was to go in for co-ordinated attacks aimed at the Iraqi leadership and striking at its command and control infrastructure. This marked a small start to what the US and its allies considered a long and hard war. After the dawn raid, the attacks picked up momentum and US cruise missiles slammed into Iraqi leader Saddam Hussain’s main Baghdad palace and other government buildings, setting off massive explosions. The missiles hit Saddam’s main sprawling palace complex on the banks of the Tigris in central Baghdad. US forces also launched air strikes and artillery fire into southern Iraq and fought the first reported ground combat of the war as cruise missiles hit Baghdad.
