1992 - The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to expel the Belgrade government from the seat once occupied by the defunct Yugoslav federation. The vote came after Milan Panic, the Prime Minister of the truncated Yugoslavia, said he was struggling to promote peace against “militant nationalists who defy our orders”. The expulsion is intended to put pressure on Belgrade to end all support for Serbian irregular forces fighting in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina and cooperate fully with peace efforts being pursued by the European Commission and the UN in Geneva. The resolution says that the Belgrade government must reapply for membership in the UN, as the other constituent republics of the former Yugoslav federation have already done.
Other important events
1642 - Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, holds its first commencement.
1817 - Spain signs a treaty with Britain to end slave trade.
1846 - The planet Neptune is discovered by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle.
1913 - French aviator Roland Garros becomes the first person to fly non-stop across the Mediterranean Sea.
1920 - Alexandre Millerand is elected President of France.
1956 - Britain and France submit Suez Canal dispute to UN Security Council.
1967 - Soviet Union pledges to send military and economic assistance to North Vietnam.
1973 - Former Argentine president Juan Peron returns to power.
1982 - Ameen Gemayel is sworn in as President of Lebanon.
1983 - A passenger plane coming from Karachi crashes in the desert between Al Ain and Dubai, killing all 112 passengers and crew.
1989 - Azerbaijan declares sovereignty from the Soviet Union.
1991 - Armenia becomes an independent nation.
1992 - Thirty-six people die in the worst floods to hit southern France in 34 years.
1993 - The South African parliament approves a law giving blacks their first official say in the running of the country.
1995 - Gunmen in Mexico ambush a squad of policemen outside a village in southern Guerrero state, killing four officers and wounding five.
1996 - A typhoon batters China’s Hainan Island, leaving at least 38 people dead and 96 missing.
1999 - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s wife Raisa is buried.
2002 - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat rejects Israel’s terms for lifting its siege of his battered offices in Ramallah.
2010 - UAE gets seat on International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors.
2013 - Egypt court orders ban of Muslim Brotherhood and its assets to be seized.
2014 - A white tiger attacks and kills a youth who fell into its enclosure at a zoo in New Delhi.
2015 - Volkswagen chief executive Martin Winterkorn resigns over a pollution cheating scandal with global dimensions.
