Hughes scores stunning win in Winter Olympics
2002 - Sixteen-year-old Sarah Hughes vaulted over early leaders Michelle Kwan and Irina Slutskaya to take the Olympic women’s figure skating gold in a stunning upset. The American teen skated first of the top contenders and, as it turned out, skated best. Russia’s Slutskaya grabbed the silver while Kwan, the 1998 Olympic silver medallist and favourite heading into the free state programme, took the bronze. Hughes, the 2001 world bronze medallist, skated the performance of her young life, knocking off seven triple jumps, four of them rarely seen combinations. “Tonight was probably my greatest skate ever,” said Hughes, who entered the free programme fourth. “Going into it, I didn’t really think I had a chance for a medal, let alone a gold because I know the competition is really difficult here.” The crowd was on its feet 10 seconds before the end of her four minute routine to Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe and flowers rained down on the ice as Hughes took her final bows.
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1838 American Samuel Morse gives the first public demonstration of the telegram in New York.
1866 Lucy B. Hobbs becomes the first American woman to graduate from dental school, the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati.
1878 First US telephone directory is issued, by the District Telephone Co of New Haven, Connecticut.
1919 Bavarian Premier Kurt Risner is assassinated in Munich.
1921 Reza Khan Pahlavi overthrows Iranian government in military coup and later becomes Shah.
1922 British protectorate in Egypt ends.
1934 Nicaraguan patriot Augusto Cesar Sandino is assassinated by National Guard.
1947 American inventor Edwin Land demonstrates the first instant camera, the Polaroid Land Camera at the Optical Society of America, New York
1965 Malcolm X is shot and killed by assassins in New York City.
1972 US President Richard M. Nixon starts his historic visit to China.
1973 Israeli fighters shoot Libyan aircraft down, killing 108.
1981 Shaikh Ahmad Bin Rashid Al Mualla, Ruler of Umm Al Quwain, dies.
1987 Pakistan President Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq arrives in New Delhi, to watch a cricket match between Indian and Pakistan.
1989 Playwright Vaclav Havel is convicted for his role in an officially banned rally in Czechoslovakia.
1992 China welcomes foreigners back to Shanghai stock market for the first time since 1949.
1995 American adventurer Steve Fossett becomes the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.
1996 In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, police fire into a carnival crowd after a man pulls out a gun near a float. Two people are killed.
2002 Sri Lankan Government signs permanent ceasefire with Tamil Tigers.
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2012 Saudi Arabia names first ambassador to Iraq since 1990.
2013 A powerful car bomb explodes near ruling Baath Party offices in Damascus, Syria, killing more than 50 people.
2014 Ukraine’s leader and opposition sign a deal to end the splintered country’s worst crisis since independence.
2015 A massive fire erupts Torch tower in Dubai Marina.
