Zayed urges to stop lavish weddings, lifestyle
1993 - President His Highness Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, lamenting extravagant living, urged the citizens to cut back on lavish weddings and hire fewer servants. “High dowries and overspending on weddings do not agree with our Islamic traditions,” he said. Shaikh Zayed said the UAE people had always lived without having “this number of maids, nannies, cooks and drivers”. The President made the remarks during a meeting with the board members of the newly-created marriage fund. He urged the authorities to step up efforts to tackle the problem of mixed marriages and high dowries. The fund has a budget of Dh80 million and will give grants of up to Dh70,000 to Emiratis.
May 19
1900 - Simplon Tunnel, the world’s longest railroad tunnel, 19 kilometres long, opens.
1916 - Britain introduces Daylight Savings Time.
1967 - Soviet Union ratifies treaty with US and Britain banning nuclear weapons in outer space.
1975 - Junko Tabei of Japan becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
1990 - US and Soviet Union reach an agreement to limit long-range nuclear arms.
1993 - A Colombian jetliner crashes near Medellin, killing 132.
1998 - Indonesian students storm the parliament in Jakarta, demanding President Suharto’s resignation.
2004 - The world’s first embryonic stem cell bank opens in the UK.
2012 - Tamae Watanabe at the age of 73 becomes the oldest woman to climb Mount Everest.
2014 - The World Free Zones Organisation (World FZO) launches in Dubai.
2016 - An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo with 66 passengers and crew on board crashes in the Mediterranean Sea.
