1991 - Ministers from 19 nations signed a United Nations-brokered peace agreement aimed at ending Cambodia’s 13-year civil war and preventing the hardline Communist Khmer Rouge from repeating past atrocities. The signing of the “Agreement on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict” at a one-day conference in Paris set in motion the most ambitious peacekeeping operation in UN history. French President Francois Mitterrand said the accord turned a dark page in the history of Cambodia. Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, co-chairman of the conference, spoke of “a new era of relationships in Southeast Asia”. But despite a mood of self-congratulation, doubts remained over whether the accord would be respected in Cambodia.
Other important events
1764 - British forces defeat Nawab of Oudh at Buxar, Bengal.
1915 - British cricketer W. G. Grace dies.
1944 - Soviet army invades Hungary.
1954 - Britain, France, US and Soviet Union agree to end occupation of Germany.
1956 - The first use of videotape on a US network television show.
1975 - Britain scraps foreign exchange controls, opening the way for investors to send their money overseas.
1980 - Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin resigns due to ill health.
1985 - Emirates airline is formally launched in Dubai.
1989 - Hungary is officially proclaimed a free republic following the end of Communist rule.
1993 - An Irish Republican Army bomb explodes on a crowded shopping street in Belfast, killing 10 people.
1994 - Sri Lankan leader Gamini Dissanayake is assassinated in a bomb blast in Colombo.
1996 - Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland stuns Norway by resigning from her post unexpectedly.
1998 - A Palestinian-Israeli interim peace accord is signed at the White House.
2001 - Apple Computer releases the first iPod digital music player.
2002 - About 40 Chechen guerrillas armed with guns and grenades hold hundreds of Moscow theatre-goers hostage.
2003 - Madame Chiang Kai-shek, widow of the Chinese nationalist leader, dies in New York at the age of 105.
2004 - A suicide car bomb explodes near a US Marine base in western Iraq, killing 16 Iraqi policemen.
2006 - Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling is sentenced by a federal judge in Houston to 24 years and four months for his role in the company’s collapse.
2010 - American swimmer Francis Crippen dies due to intense exhaustion at the 2010 Fina 10km Marathon Swimming World Cup held in Fujairah open waters.
2011 - A 7.2-magnitude earthquake strikes eastern Turkey, killing more than 200 people as buildings pancake and crumple into rubble.
