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SCMP Reporter

In Hong Kong

1958: The Shah of Iran spent five hours in the colony on his way to state visits in Taipei and Japan. He was met by the governor, Sir Robert Black, and members of Hong Kong's small Iranian community.

1964: The total number of registered newspapers at the end of March was announced as 195.

1965: British singer Matt Munro gave a concert at the Hongkong Hilton hotel.

1970: For sale: Three bedroom high-class flat facing south between Mary Knoll and La Salle schools. Approximately 1,100 square feet. $132,000.

Around the world

1643: Louis XIV acceded to the throne of France at the age of four years and eight months on the death of his father Louis XIII.

1796: Edward Jenner became the first British physician to perform a successful vaccination, inoculating an eight-year-old boy against smallpox.

1847: The British ship HMS Driver completed the first circumnavigation of the world by a steamship when it arrived at Spithead, Hampshire.

1874: The first international rugby game took place between McGill University of Montreal and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1900: The second Modern Olympic Games opened in Paris, with women being allowed to take part for the first time.

1919: Henry John Heinz, US food manufacturer, died.

1921: In the US, Florence Allen became the first woman judge to sentence a man to death. Frank Motto was executed for murder on August 20.

1940: Two-thirds of the Dutch city of Rotterdam was destroyed by German bombing, killing almost 1,000 people and leaving 80,000 homeless.

1948: The state of Israel was proclaimed at 4pm, eight hours before the British mandate in Palestine was to end.

1955: The Warsaw Pact was signed by the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania.

1973: America's Skylab I space laboratory was launched into Earth orbit by the last Saturn Five booster rocket.

1989: Peronist leader Carlos Menem swept to power in Argentina, beating ruling Radical Party candidate Eduardo Angeloz in a general election.

1989: Tens of thousands demonstrated for democratic reforms in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on the eve of a visit to the country by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

1991: Jiang Qing, widow of Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong and leader of the 'Gang of Four', committed suicide.

1991: Winnie Mandela was sentenced to six years' imprisonment for complicity in the kidnapping and beating of four youths, one of whom died. She was freed pending appeal.

1993: US newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst Jnr died after a heart attack, aged 85.

1995: The Dalai Lama proclaimed six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet's second most senior spiritual leader.



Today in history