2001- Leszek Miller, a former communist whose left-wing party trounced a faltering Solidarity government in national elections, was sworn in as Poland’s new prime minister. Miller and his Democratic Left Alliance swept into power on a pledge to improve the lives of ordinary Poles who believe they have been left out of Poland’s post-Communist economic boom. He was sworn in by President Aleksander Kwasniewski, another former Communist, in a ceremony at the Presidential Palace. Miller succeeds Jerzy Buzek, who resigned during yesterday’s seating of a new parliament in which his government’s party failed to retain a single seat. The change in power signals the end of an era for Solidarity, the once-powerful force that toppled Communist rule in 1989, and crowns a decade of work by ex-Communists to recast themselves as modern social democrats.
Other important events
1781 - British troops under Lord Cornwallis surrender at Virginia, ending American Revolution.
1933 - Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.
1950 - UN forces enter Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
1951 - US President Harry Truman formally ends the state of war with Germany.
1960 - US imposes an embargo on exports to Cuba covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products.
1983 - Grenada’s Prime Minister Maurice Bishop is shot and killed in an army takeover.
1984 - A young Polish pro-Solidarity priest, the Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko, is abducted and murdered by Communist secret police.
1986 - Mozambique’s President Samora Machel dies in a plane crash in eastern South Africa.
1987 - The stock market crashes as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 508 points, its biggest-ever percentage drop in decades.
1988 - At least 164 people are killed in twin plane crashes in India.
1993 - Israel frees its longest-held Palestinian prisoner Salim Al Zrei after 23 years.
1995 - A powerful bomb explodes at Sri Lanka’s main oil storage tank in a Colombo suburb.
1996 - Chechen separatists install their military commander Aslan Maskhadov as prime minister of a makeshift coalition government.
2003 - Pope John Paul II beatifies Mother Teresa during a ceremony in St. Peter’s Square.
2004 - Myanmar’s military regime forces out its prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt and places him under house arrest on corruption charges.
2006 - Ras Al Khaimah receives its first European chartered flight carrying 166 tourists.
2010 - Islamist insurgents, including a suicide bomber, storm Chechnya’s Parliament, leaving six people dead.
2012 - Wissam Al Hassan, the head of a Lebanese intelligence agency, is killed in a car bomb in Beirut.
2013 - A suicide bomber kills at least 15 people outside a restaurant in Baladweyne, central Somalia.
2015 - Libya’s internationally recognised government rejects a UN proposal for a power-sharing arrangement with rival Islamist-led authorities.
