At least 16 people were killed and 57 injured, when the night express from Nice to Paris smashed into a goods train at Melun, just south of Paris. The accident occurred at Melun station with the express, travelling at 75mph (120km/h), having just passed the platform when it hurtled into the locomotive of the 25mph goods train, which started to cross its path. At the moment of impact, the two trains were at an angle of 20 degrees. The first carriage of the express mounted the wreckage of the two locomotives that were left mangled together beneath. The driver of the freight train was killed. Most of the dead and injured were in the first carriage. Three other carriages were derailed, but did not overturn. The goods train broke up on impact.
Other important events:
1912 Turkey declares war on Bulgaria and Serbia.
1913 Serbs invade Albania.
1918 The Republic of Yugoslavia is formally established.
1933 Albert Einstein arrives in the United States as a refugee from Nazi Germany.
1945 Colonel Juan Peron stages a coup in Buenos Aires and becomes absolute dictator of Argentina.
1953 France agrees to withdraw all its occupation forces from Austria.
1957 French author Albert Camus is awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.
1966 Central Peru is shaken by an earthquake, which kills 92 people.
1979 Mother Teresa wins the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the destitute in Calcutta, India.
1989 Loma Prieta earthquake strikes San Francisco, California, 273 people are killed and 650 injured.
1994 Jordan and Israel sign a historic peace treaty in Amman.
1995 Algerian terrorists bomb a subway train in Paris, injuring 29.
1997 Former Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda is charged by the UN International Criminal Tribunal with genocide and crimes against humanity in 1994.
1998 A pipeline explodes in Nigeria when villagers try to siphon off oil. At least 700 die.
1998 Former governor of the Sindh province, Hakim Mohammad Saeed is assassinated in Karachi.
1999 Mika Hakkinen of Maclaren wins Formula One World Championship.
2000 Dubai Marina gets first taste of water
2000 A high-speed passenger train travelling from London to Leeds derails in the commuter belt north of the British capital, killing four and injuring 34.
2001 Israel’s tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi is shot dead in the first-ever assassination of a serving cabinet minister.
2003 Carlos Mesa becomes President of Bolivia
2005 China celebrates the successful landing of the country’s second manned space flight as a boost to its status as a space power.
2006 Bahrain’s Latifa Al Gaood becomes the first woman in the Gulf to win a parliamentary general election.
2008 Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulukar becomes the highest run scorer in Test cricket with 12,027 runs.
2009 The first Chile Embassy is opened in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
2010 Farah Saeed has becomes the first female Emirati to join Etihad as a cabin crew member.
2012 Etihad Airways signs a codeshare agreement with Garuda Indonesia.
2014 India successfully test-fires its first domestically built nuclear-capable long-range cruise missile Nirbhay.
