1992 - China’s ex-president Li Xiannian, a hardline behind-the-scenes powerbroker, has died at the age of 83 in the midst of a bitter debate by the ageing leadership on conflicting visions of the future. Li, president for five years before being forced out in 1988 to become chairman of the advisory committee to parliament, died of an unspecified illness. As one of the eight aged leaders informally called “the immortals” who control Chinese politics from behind the scenes, Li was much more influential than his post as chairman of the largely powerless Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference would suggest. Li has not been seen in public since missing the last meeting of the consultative body in March because he was in hospital.
Other important events
1788 - New Hampshire becomes the ninth and last state that needed to ratify the Constitution of the United States.
1871 - The French consul and some 20 other foreigners are killed by a mob in Tientsin, China.
1898 - Guam becomes a territory of the US.
1948 - Earl Mountbatten of Burma resigns as Governor General of India and is succeeded by Chakravarti Rajagopalachari.
1963 - Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini is elected the new pope, taking the name Paul VI.
1971 - International Court of Justice in The Hague rules that South Africa’s administration of territory of Southwest Africa is illegal.
1983 - Tennis ace Arthur Ashe undergoes double bypass heart surgery.
1992 - Ethiopians vote in their country’s first multiparty elections, but balloting is marred by opposition boycotts.
1995 - The Grand Monte Antenne Mosque, Rome’s first mosque, is inaugurated.
1997 - France, Russia and US agree to toughen sanctions against Iraq.
2001 - Billy Collins becomes Poet Laureate of the US.
2004 - A dreamer and a billionaire team up to send the world’s first privately-owned rocket into suborbital space.
2005 - Prominent Lebanese politician George Hawi dies in a Beirut bomb blast.
2007 - Noted Iraqi poetess Nazek Al Malaika passes away in Cairo at the age of 85.
2010 - Emirates Flight EK 9883 is the first flight to land at the Dubai World Central.
2012 - The new Dh10 billion Habshan-Fujairah pipeline begins oil exports.
2015 - German driver Nico Rosberg wins Austrian Grand Prix.
