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SCMP Reporter

In Hong Kong

1961: British Open winner Kel Nagle of Australia, established a new course record at the Shek O Country Club when he shot 59 during a pro-am golf tournament.

1974: Hong Kong experienced its worst cold snap in three years when the mercury plunged to minus 1.5 degrees Celsius at Tate's Cairn and minus five degrees at Tai Mo Shan.

1975: Terry Jacks, the Canadian singer who had a worldwide smash with the song Seasons In The Sun, arrived in Hong Kong on an unannounced visit.

Around the world

1587: After 19 years imprisonment, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded for her part in a plot to overthrow Queen Elizabeth.

1725: Peter the Great of Russia died and was succeeded by Catherine I. His reign saw Russia drawn increasingly into the European sphere of influence.

1861: The southern states which had seceded from the Union agreed to set up The Confederate States of America.

1862: Union forces took Roanoke Island, North Carolina, from the Confederacy during the American Civil War.

1863: Prussia allied with Russia to suppress the revolution in Poland.

1904: The Russo-Japanese War began when the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in northeast China.

1924: The gas chamber was used for the first time as a form of execution when Gee Jon was put to death in Nevada for murder.

1937: In the Spanish Civil War, General Franco captured Malaga with the help of 15,000 Italians.

1963: Iraqi President Abdel-Karim Kassem was overthrown and killed in a military coup.

1967: Sir Victor Gollancz, publisher and writer, died. During World War II, he helped Jews escape from Germany.

1974: America's final Skylab mission, with Gerald Carr, Edward Gibson and William Pogue, returned to earth.

1979: The US suspended all civilian aid to Nicaragua.

1983: The Kahan Report on the Beirut Sabra and Shatila massacres in September 1982, condemned Israel and its Defence Minister Ariel Sharon.

1989: An American airliner taking Italian tourists to a Caribbean holiday crashed in the mid-Atlantic Azores, killing all 144 people aboard.

1993: An Iranian airliner crashed after a collision with a military Sukhoi plane. All 132 on board the Soviet-made Tupolev died. The pilot and co-pilot of the military plane also died.

1997: A rampaging gunman shot dead six people in the central North Island town of Raurimu, New Zealand.

1999: Iris Murdoch, one of the 20th century's great British novelists and author of The Sea, The Sea and An Accidental Man, died aged 79.

2000: In Israel's heaviest attacks on Lebanon since June, fighters destroyed three power stations, blacking out Beirut and wounding 15.



Today in history