2002 - An expelled student went on a shooting rampage in a German high school, killing 14 staff members, three other people and himself in the worst civilian massacre in Germany since World War II. Thirteen teachers, including the school vice director, as well as two female students, a policeman and the 19-year-old gunman were among those who died in the bloodbath at the Gutenberg high school in the eastern city of Erfurt. A secretary were also killed in the attack that came as hundreds of students sat for end-of-the-year examinations. Police said the gunman, masked and clad in black, stormed the school at about 11.00am, charged into a room where students were taking a mathematics test and said: “I’m not going to write anything.”
Other important events
1828 - Russia declares war on Ottoman Empire in Turkey.
1860 - Spain and Morocco sign a peace deal.
1872 - Civil war breaks out in Spain.
1885 - Britain occupies Port Hamilton, Korea.
1925 - Paul von Hindenburg is elected as President of Germany.
1942 - A coal mine disaster in Benxi, Japanese-occupied China, kills 1,549 workers.
1961 - American Robert Noyce patents the integrated circuit.
1962 - First international satellite is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1964 - African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.
1986 - The world’s worst nuclear accident occurs at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union.
1989 - Chinese students march to central Beijing to protest government statements condemning their campaign for democracy.
1993 - An Indian airliner hits a truck on takeoff and crashes in Aurangabad, India, killing 56 people.
1994 - Taiwanese airliner crashes in Japan, killing 264.
1996 - United States peace-shuttle diplomacy finally bring a ceasefire to war-damaged Lebanon with a deal announced by Warren Christopher.
2001 - Junichiro Koizumi is elected as Japan’s new Prime Minister.
2005 - Syria’s last soldier in Lebanon walks free across the border.
2010 - Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir wins the country’s first multi-party presidential election in over two decades.
2013 - A car bomb explodes near a secular party’s election office in Karachi, Pakistan, killing at least 10 people.
