1986 - The US-Soviet talks in Iceland ended in failure with both US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev blaming each other for the outcome. Reagan speaking to US servicemen near Reykjavik, said he had made Moscow an historic offer on arms control which Gorbachev had rejected. Gorbachev, addressing a news conference in the Icelandic capital, said the US leader had come to the meeting with empty hands and the talks had collapsed. “This has been a failure and failure when we were very close to an historic agreement,” the Kremlin chief added. Gorbachev said the world was approaching a point of no return because US-Soviet arms talks were practically at a standstill. US Secretary of State George Shultz said the talks had ended with no new agreement on arms control and no date had been set for a new formal summit. Shultz said the mini-summit had stalled over the issue of Reagan’s ‘star wars’ space defence programme.
Other important events
1822 - Brazil becomes independent from Portugal.
1933 - Bank robber John Dillinger escapes from a jail in Allen County, Ohio, with the help of his gang.
1942 - US forces defeat the Japanese in the Battle of Cape Esperance on Guadalcanal in the Second World War.
1945 - Allied Control Council in Germany orders dissolution of Nazi Party after the Second World War.
1964 - US forces take control in South Vietnam, ousting the government of Maj. Gen. Nguyen Khanh.
1969 - Soviet Union launches Soyuz VII spacecraft.
1973 - Juan Peron returns as President of Argentina after 18 years in exile.
1984 - An Irish Republican Army bomb explodes at a hotel in Brighton, England, where British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was attending a conference, killing five people.
1986 - Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first British monarch to visit China.
1992 - A strong earthquake near Cairo kills more than 500 people.
1996 - Wonder Land is inaugurated in Dubai.
1997 - Cuban President Fidel Castro appoints his brother Raul as his successor.
1998 - Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic agrees to withdraw his forces from Kosovo.
1999 - General Pervez Musharraf seizes power in a military coup in Pakistan.
2000 - Seventeen sailors are killed in a suicide bomb attack on the US destroyer Cole in Yemen.
2001 - UN and its Secretary-General Kofi Annan win the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to ensure a better-organised and more peaceful world.
2002 - A bomb explodes in a resort area on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people.
2004 - Saudi security forces kill three suspected militants in a shootout.
2005 - Syrian Interior Minister Gazi Kanaan commits suicide in his office in Al Marjah, Damascus.
2008 - American computer game designer Richard Garriott reaches space aboard a Russian rocket.
2011 - The Royal Opera House of Oman, the first of its kind in the Arabian Peninsula, is officially opened.
2014 - Lewis Hamilton wins the inaugural Russian Grand Prix.
