1996 Martin Bryant, who had gunned down 35 people at Port Arthur,
Australia, was sentenced to life behind bars with no chance for parole.
1995 OPEC agreed to maintain its 1994 oil production quotas.
1995 La dirección del principal grupo islámico de Argelia, el
FIS reconoce la legitimidad de Liamin Zerual en un gesto sin precedentes, pues la formación
integrista boicoteó las elecciones argelinas.
1995 Simón Peres asume la jefatura del
Gobierno israelí y el cargo de ministro de Defensa, después del asesinato
de Isaac Rabin.
1993 Mexico's Senate approved the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA).
1993 striking American Airline flight attendants agreed to return
to work after President Clinton urged both sides in the labor dispute
to seek arbitration.
1991 Representantes de la Comisión Europea y de Polonia, Checoslovaquia
y Hungría firman en Bruselas los acuerdos de asociación a la CE, vía
de integración lenta en el organismo.
1990 Margaret Thatcher resigns
as UK prime minister
After eleven years as the first
woman Prime Minister in British history, Margaret Thatcher,
having failed to win re-election of the Conservative Party leadership
on the first ballot, announces her resignation.
Thatcher first entered British
politics in 1959 when she was elected as a Conservative MP for
Finchley, an area of North London. During the 1960s, Thatcher
rose rapidly in the ranks of the Conservative Party, and in
1967, joined the shadow cabinet sitting in opposition to Harold
Wilson's ruling Labour cabinet. With the victory of the Conservative
Party under Edward Health in 1970, Thatcher became secretary
of state for education and science. In 1974, the Labour Party
returned to power, and she served as joint shadow chancellor
before replacing Edward Health as the leader of the Conservative
Party in 1975. Under her leadership, the Conservative Party
shifted further right in its politics, called for privatization
of nationalized industries and utilities, and promised a resolute
defense of Britain's interests abroad. In 1979, Thatcher was
named prime minister as the Conservatives won a forty-four seat
majority in Parliament. Her government began a rapid program
of privatization and government cutbacks, winning acclaim from
some quarters but also contributing to the most polarized British
society in decades. In 1983, despite the worst unemployment
figures for half-a-decade, Thatcher was reelected to a second
term thanks to the British victory in the Falklands War with
Argentina, and in 1987, to a third term thanks to an upswing
in the economy. In 1990, the unpopularity of her poll tax, coupled
with her uncompromising opposition to further British integration
into the European Community, led to her defeat as Conservative
Party leader. Thatcher's resignation marked the longest continuous
tenure of a British prime minister in 150 years. |
1989 Eastern Airlines pilots and flight attendants end their
strike, but most are not rehired
1989 Conjunction of Venus, Mars, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn & the
Moon
1989 12 US Green Berets are evacuated from the San Salvador
Sheraton. They are the last of nearly 100 people trapped when leftist
rebels seized the hotel.
1989 En las elecciones parlamentarias de la
India, el Partido del Congreso, que ostenta el poder, sufre un fuerte
retroceso.
1988 Los conservadores de Martin Brian
Mulroney ganan las elecciones generales en Canadá, con mayoría absoluta
en el Parlamento.
1985 Microsoft licenses Apple's
look and feel
Microsoft signs an agreement
with Apple, allowing Microsoft to copy visual characteristics
of Apple's Macintosh in its Microsoft Windows software. Windows
was heavily based on the Macintosh user interface (which, in
turn, was greatly influenced by the Alto, designed at Xerox
PARC in 1972). In 1988, Apple sued Microsoft for copyright infringement,
because Microsoft's licensing agreement had applied only to
Windows 1.0, not to subsequent versions. The suit was dismissed
in 1991. |
1985 Julio Caro Baroja recibe el Premio
Nacional de las Letras Españolas.
1985 Iacocca leads naturalization
ceremony
Lee Iacocca, the CEO of the Chrysler
Corporation, presided over the largest swearing-in ceremony
for new US citizens in American history. At the end of six
days of rallies around the country, Iacocca, the son of Italian
immigrants himself, lead 38'648 people in a swearing of allegiance
to the United States. Iacocca served as president of the Ford
Motor Company during the 1970s, and was largely responsible
for the extremely profitable Mustang car.
After a falling out with Henry
Ford II in 1978, Iacocca moved to the struggling Chrysler Corporation,
and steered the company back to profitability as president and
later as CEO. Iacocca was also one of the most charismatic and
influential men Detroit had ever known. After making massive
but necessary cuts to Chrysler's workforce, Iacocca elected
to pay himself only $1 for his first year as CEO, explaining
that everyone had to make sacrifices in order for Chrysler to
survive. He also appeared in Chrysler's commercials as himself,
wrote a best-selling autobiography, and entertained the possibility
of running for president of the United States.
A self-made son of immigrants,
America's immigration and ethnic heritage was always important
to Iacocca. Three years before presiding over the record-breaking
swearing-in ceremony, Iacocca helped form the Statue of Liberty-Ellis
Island Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 1982
to raise funds for the restoration and preservation of the Statue
of Liberty and Ellis Island. Iacocca later became chairman emeritus
of this organization. |
1981 El físico ruso Andrei Dimitrievich
Sajarov inicia una huelga de hambre en protesta por la negativa de visado
a su nuera para poder visitar a su marido en EE.UU.
1978 Las Cortes de España aprueban el Estatuto de Autonomía de
Galicia.
1977 Anglo-French supersonic Concorde jetliner begins scheduled
flights, on a trial basis, between New York and London or Paris.
1977 A federal judge fines Phillips Petroleum $30'000 for using
a clandestine corporate fund to illegally funnel contributions to various
political campaigns. The judge also found Phillips guilty of filing false
tax reports.
1975 Juan Carlos becomes Spanish
King
Two days after the death of General
Francisco Franco, the dictator of Spain since 1936, Juan Carlos
is sworn in as the first ruling monarch of Spain in more than
forty years. Juan Carlos's grandfather was Alfonso XIII, the
last ruling monarch of Spain, who was forced into exile after
he refused to abdicate the throne after Spain was declared a
republic. Juan Carlos, born in Italy in 1938, returned to Spain
in 1955 under the invitation of Franco, and studied in Madrid
before earning several commissions in the Spanish armed forces.
In 1969, Franco named him his successor. However, after assuming
power, King Juan Carlos I immediately begins dismantling Franco's
system of dictatorial government, and over the next decade presides
over a period of extensive democratization in Spain.
— Juan Carlos I, hijo de Don Juan de Borbón y Battemberg (Conde de Barcelona)
y nieto de Alfonso XIII, es proclamado
Rey de España dos días después de la muerte de Francisco Franco Bahamonde. |
1972 The State Department ended a 22-year ban on US travel to
China.
1972 The United States loses its first B-52 of the Vietnam War.
The eight-engine bomber is brought down by a North Vietnamese surface-to-air
missile near Vinh on this day when B-52s fly their heaviest raids of
the war over North Vietnam. The Communists claim 19 B-52s shot down to
date.
1972 Starts of design of Alto
computer
Chuck Thacker, a computer scientist
at Xerox PARC, starts designing the Alto computer, designed
to improve the quality of machine-human interactions. The computer
featured a graphical user interface, a mouse, and the ability
to network easily with other computers. Despite its cutting-edge
design, Xerox decided not to market the Alto. Instead, Apple's
cofounder Steve Jobs, who saw a working version of Alto during
a visit to Xerox PARC in December 1979, adopted many of Alto's
ideas into the interfaces for the Apple Lisa and the Apple Macintosh,
released in 1984. |
1967 Silver hits record $2.17 an ounce in New York
1967 US commander in Vietnam
claims a great victory
General William Westmoreland,
commander of US Military Assistance Command Vietnam, briefs
officials at the Pentagon and says that the battle around Dak
To was "the beginning of a great defeat for the enemy." The
battle for Dak To began on November 3 when 4500 US soldiers
from the US 4th Division and the 173rd Airborne Brigade engaged
four Communist regiments of about 6000 soldiers in the Central
Highlands. The climax of the operation came in a savage battle
that began on 19 November on Hill 875, 12 miles southwest of
Dak To. The 173rd defeated the North Vietnamese, causing them
to abandon their last defensive line on the ridge of Hill 875.
However, it was a costly victory for the US, which suffered
the loss of 135 men. In the 19 days of the battle in and around
Dak To, North Vietnamese fatalities were estimated at 1455.
Total US casualties included 285 killed, 985 wounded, and 18
missing. In his briefing at the Pentagon, Westmoreland stressed
the positive outcome of the battle. He revealed that a document
removed from the body of a dead North Vietnamese soldier on
November 6 stated that the Dak To battle was to be the beginning
of a winter/spring offensive by the Communist B-3 Front. This
document also revealed that the main objective of the action
at Dak To was the destruction of a major American unit. The
communists came close but ultimately failed in this objective.
The US troops, despite heavy losses, defeated the North Vietnamese,
mauling three enemy regiments so badly that the they had to
be withdrawn from South Vietnam to Cambodian and Laotian sanctuaries
for refitting.
Westmoreland was reportedly brought
home from Vietnam by President Johnson to fulfill a public relations
task and revive flagging morale throughout the country. His
message on US military prospects in Vietnam was continually
optimistic, as he emphasized that progress was being made in
the fight against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. These
public statements came back to haunt him when the communists
launch a massive offensive during the Tet New Year holiday on
30 January 1968. |
1967 UN Security Council passes resolution 242 — Israel
must give back occupied land
1960 La ONU admite como delegados del
Congo-Léopoldville a los representantes del presidente Joseph Kasavubu y excluye a los de
Patrice Emery Lumumba.
1960 Más de dos millones de españoles trabajan en el extranjero.
1953 The first commercially-sponsored program to be broadcast
in color: the Colgate Comedy Hour. Commercial television broadcasts
in black and white had started in 1946, when Bristol Myers Company sponsored
Geographically Speaking on 27 October 1946
1948 Vietnam solicita su admisión en
la ONU.
1943 Líbano obtiene la independencia.
1943 US — UK-China summit meeting
decides Japan's fate
US President Roosevelt, UK Prime
Minister Winston Churchill and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek
of China gather in Cairo, Egypt, for a four-day discussion focused
primarily on the future of Japan. They agreed to strip Japan
of "all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied"
during the twentieth century, including Korea, Formosa, and
Manchuria. They also stipulated that, upon the conclusion of
war, only an unconditional surrender would be accepted from
Japan.
During the conference, Roosevelt
and Churchill also met with President Ismet Inonti of Turkey
to ask that nation to enter the war against Germany. Despite
the friendly façade of the conference, the atmosphere was a
bit chilly. American General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell lobbied
openly against Chiang Kai-Shek, and the Generalissimo bitterly
demanded concessions from Roosevelt in return. Meanwhile, Chiang's
Wellesley-educated wife went on lavish shopping sprees and dished
out acerbic comments at the meeting's numerous social gatherings.
Nonetheless, the upshot of the Cairo Conference—beyond Japan's
imminent doom if they lost the war—was the implication that
China would be conferred Great Power status in the postwar world.
At the beginning of a five-day
Allied conference in Cairo, Egypt, US President Franklin D.
Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet
with General Chiang Kai-shek of China to discuss strategy in
the war against Japan. On the military front, few specific strategic
plans are made; however, the leaders do agree to a declaration
calling for a postwar expulsion of Japan from all territories
seized since 1914, including Korea. Roosevelt and Churchill
meet separately with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in Teheran,
Iran, the day after the conclusion of the Cairo summit. |
1935 China Clipper (flying boat) took off from Alameda, CA, carrying
100'000 pieces of mail on 1st trans-Pacific airmail flight
1932 Pump patented that computes quantity & price delivered
1924 England orders Egyptians out of Sudan
1923 US President Coolidge pardons WW I German spy Lothar Witzke,
sentenced to death
1918 Rusia suspende las hostilidades contra Alemania, en aplicación
del Tratado de Brest-Litovsk.
1906 Le premier ministre russe Stolypine engage une vigoureuse
réforme agraire qui commencera des résultats prometteurs mais sera interrompue
par la Grande Guerre et la Révolution.
1906 The "SOS" distress signal is adopted at the International
Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin.
1842 Mount St Helens in Washington, erupts.
1831 Les canuts de Lyon se révoltent contre la mécanisation des
métiers de la soie, qui menace leur emploi.
1809 Peregrine Williamson of Baltimore patents a steel pen
1633 Irish Catholic Cecil
Calvert, 27, sends 20 gentlemen and about 300 laborers, led by send
his brothers, Leonard and George, on two ships (the Ark and the
Dove) from Ireland to establish a colony in America as a refuge
for fellow Catholics. His work later earned Lord Calvert the nickname,
"Colonizer of Maryland."
1559 Se publica en España una pragmática de
Felipe II que prohíbe a los españoles estudiar en el extranjero. .
1220 Pope Honorius
III (elected 18 July 1216) crowns Holy Roman Emperor his former pupil
Frederick II of Germany, in St. Peter's, on the promise that Frederick
would uphold the rights of the Church, and promote a crusade (this promise
was never kept).
0845 Le breton Nominoë bat les Francs. La Bretagne devient indépendante
de la France pour près de sept siècles.
0498 St
Symmachus is elected Pope, later the same day the minority pro-byzantine
party elects Laurentius (antiPope). The rivalry drags on for years, involving
the arbitration of the Gothic king Theodoric.
|
2000
Carlos Cardoso, 49, murdered, Mozambican journalist critical
of government.
1916 
