1996 - His Highness Shaikh Maktoum Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, officially opened the Emirates Group Training College and unveiled a plaque commemorating the event. The college is the first of its kind in the Middle East and a showpiece for both its facilities and its training excellence. Shaikh Maktoum was accompanied by Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Minister of Defence, Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and UAE Minister of Finance and Industry. Shaikh Maktoum was impressed by the technological sophistication of the college. Shaikh Mohammad stressed the importance of management, work and training.
Other important events
1783 - British evacuate New York, their last military position in the United States, during the Revolutionary War.
1867 - Dyanamite is patented in the US by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel.
1897 - Spain grants Puerto Rico autonomy.
1917 - Russia holds its last free election for more than half a century.
1940 - Woody Woodpecker makes his first appearance in the Andy Panda cartoon Knock Knock.
1952 - The world’s longest-running play, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, opens in London.
1965 - Mobutu Sese Seko becomes President of Congo after seizing power in a bloodless coup.
1967 - More than 65 people die in a Colombian town after eating bread contaminated by insecticide.
1973 - Greece’s President George Papadopoulos is ousted in a bloodless military coup.
1975 - The Netherlands grants Suriname its independence.
1979 - Saudi Arabia retakes the Grand Mosque in Makkah from extremists.
1986 - The Iran-Contra affair erupts that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to Nicaraguan rebels.
1995 - Poland’s President-elect Aleksander Kwasniewski resigns from the former communist party in a bid to be seen as a leader above politics.
1998 - President Jiang Zemin arrives in Tokyo for the first visit to Japan by a Chinese head of state since the Second World War.
2000 - Earthquake in Baku, Azerbaijan, kills 26 people.
2002 - Attackers dynamite Colombia’s largest oil pipeline near the town of Aguazul, causing a spill.
2006 - UAE opens its first credit bureau.
2007 - Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan after seven years in exile in Saudi Arabia.
2009 - Heavy rain and floods kill at least 13 people in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
2010 - Shaikh Zayed Bridge is inaugurated in Abu Dhabi.
2011 - Moroccans vote in the first legislative election since the king introduced constitutional reforms.
2015 - UAE signs an agreement to set up the GCC police force, to be headquartered in Abu Dhabi.
