An equal joint venture between Dubai Internet City (DIC) and IBM, the e-Hosting Centre has gone operational, with trial tests to be gone through over the next two weeks. Investments in the new facility run into millions of dollars, according to the promoters. General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Minister of Defence, opened the DIC-based facility, the first in the Middle East. The project took nearly 12 months for completion. The centre will offer third-party organisations wishing to have a presence in the e-business sphere the platform to do so, but without having to make their own investments on infrastructure, management and personnel. This is the first time IBM has entered into a partnership to develop such a centre.
Other important events:
1784 Holland cedes Negapatam and Madras, India, to Britain.
1896 Marines land in Nicaragua to protect US citizens in the wake of a revolution.
1899 Martha M. Place becomes the first woman to be executed in the electric chair in the US.
1900 Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla receives a patent for the wireless transmission of electricity.
1902 American inventor Nathan Stubblefield demonstrates the first mobile radio telephone.
1916 Allies agree on partition of Turkey.
1920 Swiss automaker Bugatti delivers its first luxury car.
1940 Paul Reynaud becomes French prime minister.
1956 Tunisia gains independence from France.
1964 The European Space Research Organisation is established in Paris, France.
1972 Nineteen mountain climbers on Japan’s Mount Fuji are killed in avalanche.
1976 Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst is convicted of armed robbery.
1977 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi loses election in India.
1986 Jacques Chirac becomes French Prime Minister.
1987 Italian air force chief General Livio Giorgieri is shot dead by two youths on motorcycle
1990 Namibia becomes independent, marking the end of 75 years of South African rule.
1991 Khaleda Zia is elected prime minister of Bangladesh.
1994 Tunisians elect first multi-party parliament.
1995 In Tokyo, 12 people are killed, more than 5,500 others sickened when packages containing the poisonous gas leak on five subway trains.
1998 Africa’s Trans-Kalahari Highway connecting the Atlantic and Indian oceans open.
1999 Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones make the first non-stop hot-air balloon flight around the world.
2000 President Abdou Diouf concedes defeat in Senegalese elections.
2003 The US and its allies invade Iraq from Kuwait.
2007 Fire engulfs a nursing home in Kamyshevatskaya, a small town in south Russia, killing 62 frail and elderly residents.
2008 Emirates become the first airline to commercially launch an inflight mobile telephone service.
2011 At least seven miners are killed and 41 others trapped after explosions trigger a collapse in a coal mine at Sorange district in Pakistan’s Balochistan province.
2013 Bangladeshi President Zillur Rahman dies at the age 85.
2014 Seven Taliban suicide attackers storm a police station in Jalalabad city, Afghanistan, killing 10 policemen.
2016 Sharjah has been declared the Capital of Arab Press 2016 by the United Arab Media Council.
