President Laurent Kabila took office as head-of-state of the Democratic Republic of Congo, promising to hold elections in April 1999 and to bury the legacy of ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. In an address to the nation, punctuated with side-swipes at western governments who had supported Mobutu and were now questioning his own democratic credentials, he made clear he would bring democratic change to former Zaire, on his own terms. “We are not in a hurry. This crumbling and shattered state must be organised so that the Congolese people can hold elections,” he said. Kabila, whose forces marched into the capital on May 17 after a seven-month civil war, swore the oath of office in front of the head of the supreme court and a crowd of tens of thousands.
Other important events:
1765 Peter II, grandson of Peter I and son of Alexis, becomes czar of Russia.
1914 British ocean liner Empress collides with the Norweigian freighter Storstad, drowning 1,012 passengers and crew as it sinks in Canada’s Gulf of St Lawrence.
1916 The US invades the Dominican Republic.
1919 Charles Strite files patent for the pop-up toaster.
1922 Ecuador becomes independent.
1943 Americans defeat the Japanese in Battle of Attu in Aleutian Islands in the Second World War.
1953 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay becomes the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
1954 British athlete Diane Leather becomes the first woman to run a mile in under five minutes.
1972 US President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign declaration pledging era of peaceful coexistence between the two countries.
1973 Tom Bradley is elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.
1977 Janet Guthrie becomes 1st woman to drive in Indy 500.
1983 A Rembrandt painting worth £1 million is stolen from the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London
1985 Forty people are killed in European Championship Cup riots in Belgium.
1988 US President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union.
1990 Boris Yeltsin is elected President of the Russian republic.
1991 Croatia declares itself ‘an independent state’ and formally secedes from Yugoslavia a month later.
1994 The former Communist party wins a majority in the second free Hungarian elections since the Communist government fell in 1989.
1998 Former movie star Joseph Estrada becomes Philippine president.
1999 Olusegun Obasanjo is sworn in as Nigeria’s elected president, ending 15 years of military rule.
2000 Fiji’s army seizes power and declares martial law.
2001 The Gold and Diamond Park is officially inaugurated in Dubai.
2005 Renault’s Fernando Alonso wins a dramatic European Grand Prix at Nuerburgring circuit in Germany.
2006 Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe wins a second term by a landslide.
2008 Ehsan Barakat becomes the first woman judge in Jordan.
2010 115 people are confirmed dead in the Jnaneswari Express disaster in India.
2011 Goodluck Jonathan is sworn in as president of Nigeria after winning the general election.
2014 Egyptian ex-army chief Abdul Fattah Al Sissi wins the presidential election.
2015 Sepp Blatter wins a fifth term as Fifa president.
