1987 - Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze (above left) and US Secretary of State George Shultz, at the outset of three days of top-level talks, signed an agreement to limit the chances of accidental nuclear war. The accord sets up centres in Washington and Moscow to supplement the hot-line link established 24 years ago, after the Cuban missile crisis. The centre would be staffed by US personnel in the United States and Soviet personnel in the Soviet Union. Shevardnadze also met US President Ronald Reagan, but said the letter he was delivering from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev did not include a date for a possible summit meeting. With Reagan looking on, Shevardnadze and Shultz, in a Rose Garden ceremony, signed the agreement.
Other important events
1776 - British forces occupy New York City.
1789 - The US Department of Foreign Affairs is renamed the Department of State.
1810 - Mexico rejects Spanish rule.
1821 - Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador declare independence.
1830 - English railroad pioneer George Stephenson opens the 36-mile (58km) Liverpool-Manchester line, marking the birth of the railroad age.
1882 - British forces occupy Cairo.
1916 - Tanks are used for the first time in war, in a British attack on German lines near the Somme in France.
1917 - Russia is proclaimed a republic by Alexander Kerensky, the head of a provisional government.
1924 - A military junta ejects Chile’s elected President, Arturo Palma.
1946 - People’s republic is formed in Bulgaria after referendum rejects monarchy.
1947 - Typhoon Kathleen hits Boso Peninsula and Kanto region in Japan, causing massive flooding and killing 1,930 people.
1950 - UN forces under US General Douglas MacArthur land at Incheon, South Korea, halting North Korean advance.
1981 - Al Zahra Hospital, the UAE’s first private general hospital, opens in Sharjah.
1982 - The former Iranian foreign minister, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, is executed after being convicted of plotting against the government.
1993 - Hijackers, brandishing grenades, force a Russian jetliner with 52 people aboard, to land in Norway, then surrender to police and ask for political asylum.
1997 - Irish Republican Army-allied Sinn Fein party enters Northern Ireland’s peace talks for the first time.
2000 - Mexicans are free to publicly toast their independence from Spain for the first time in 70 years.
2003 - A fire at Saudi Arabia’s largest prison, Al Hair, in Riyadh kills 67 inmates.
2008 - Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai signs a power-sharing agreement with his nemesis, President Robert Mugabe.
2015 - Malcolm Turnbull is sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Australia.
