1997 - At least 30 people were killed as a series of tornadoes ripped through central Texas, destroying a subdivision in the tiny town of Jarrell and collapsing a grocery store on the shoppers inside. Jarrell, which was nearly destroyed by a violent storm eight years ago, took the brunt of the damage from the tornadoes, which moved through central Texas from Waco to Austin. Jarrell, a farming community of roughly 1,000 people about 40 miles (64km) north of Austin, was “pretty well flattened” by the late-afternoon twister, said Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Mike Cox. In Jarrell, frightened residents began picking through the debris, hoping to find relatives who were still unaccounted for. Most of the residents had terrible memories of the predawn hours.
Other important events
1883 - Czar Alexander III crowned in Moscow.
1905 - Japanese annihilate Russian fleet of 32 ships in the Tsushima Straits off Korea.
1937 - The Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County, California, opens.
1941 - German battleship Bismarck is sunk by British Navy off France, with loss of 2,300 lives.
1951 - Chinese Communists force Dalai Lama to surrender his army to Beijing.
1960 - Military coup overthrows democratic government of Turkey.
1964 - India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru dies.
1970 - Leftist coalition led by Sirimavo Bandaranaike wins Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) elections.
1971 - Soviet Union signs 15-year pact with Egypt, pledging assistance in recovery of all Arab territories occupied by Zionists.
1991 - Austrian airliner Lauda-Air explodes over central Thailand, killing 223 passengers and crew.
1997 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin signs a historic treaty with Nato.
1999 - A UN tribunal indicts Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity, holding the Yugoslav president responsible for the horrors in Kosovo.
2000 - The new campus of American University in Dubai (AUD) is officially inaugurated.
2006 - A 6.3-magnitude earthquake in central Indonesia kills at least 5,800 people.
2007 - Sindh administration bars Tehrik-E-Insaf chief Imran Khan from entering Karachi for a month.
2013 - Saudi Prince Metab Bin Abdullah is appointed to head a new National Guard ministry.
2015 - Swiss police arrest seven senior Fifa officials from a plush Zurich hotel, including vice-president Jeffrey Webb.
