Voting in Iran’s presidential election was extended twice due to a high turnout in the sharpest political battle between conservatives and moderates since the Islamic revolution. Voting ended after four extra hours of balloting. More than 33,000 polling stations which opened at 8am and were due to close 10 hours later were twice instructed by the Interior Ministry to remain open and eventually closed at 10pm. “The participation is unprecedented and we hope to have 90 per cent of eligible voters cast their ballots,” said Interior Minister Ali Mohammad Besharati. After a fiercely fought campaign and talk about fears of vote-rigging, the result seemed likely to be a close contest between two middle-ranking clergymen, Mohammad Khatami and Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri. Khatami, a former culture minister who has attracted a rainbow coalition of women, youths and intellectuals seeking change after 18 years of revolution, was expected to sweep Tehran and other big cities.
Other important events:
1876 American baseball player Joe Borden of Boston pitches the first no-hit game in National League history.
1915 Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary, entering the First World War.
1922 Walt Disney incorporates his first film company Laugh-O-Gram Films.
1926 France declares Lebanon a republic.
1928 22 killed in bomb attack on Italian embassy in Buenos Aires.
1934 American bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker are shot dead by state police in Louisiana.
1945 Winston Churchill resigns as British Prime Minister.
1949 German Federal Republic comes into being with the capital in Bonn.
1951 China annexes Tibet.
1969 The death toll in Malaysia rioting exceeds 500, with 90 per cent of casualties ethnic Chinese.
1971 An earthquake destroys the town of Bingol in eastern Turkey, killing 1,000 people.
1992 The US and four former Soviet republics sign agreement to implement the Start missile-reduction treaty.
1993 The Republic of Eritrea becomes Africa’s newest independent state.
1993 Cambodians vote despite Khmer threats.
1996 A North Korean pilot flies his MiG-19 jet across the world’s most heavily guarded border and defects to South Korea.
1998 The people of Northern Ireland vote to accept the Good Friday Agreement, with 75 per cent in favour of a Northern Ireland Assembly.
2000 Gulf Cooperation Council states sign the Declaration on Cooperation with the European Free Trade Association in Brussels.
2003 The US Administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, officially dissolves the Iraqi Army, putting 400,000 troops out of work.
2004 Horst Koehler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund, is elected Germany’s ninth president.
2005 Renowned Kuwaiti pioneer Abdul Aziz Hamad Al Saqr dies at the age of 92.
2012 At least 25 people are killed in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district when the Bengaluru-bound Hampi Express rams into a stationary freight train.
2013 A bomb planted in a rickshaw tears through a truck used by security forces in Quetta, Pakistan, killing at least 13 people.
2016 India successfully launches its first mini-space shuttle and join the global race to make rockets reusable.
