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SCMP Reporter

In Hong Kong

1959: Offices to let. Central District, New Kwong On Bank Building, 137-141 Queen's Road Central. Offices from 300 to 1,200 square feet at $1.20 per sq ft.

1963: Hong Kong's first air-conditioned taxi was test-driven in the New Territories. The Kowloon Taxicab and Transportation Co had equipped a Morris Oxford with the 1.5 horsepower system.

1968: The Government's Advisory Committee on Gambling Policy recommended greyhound racing should not be introduced, scuppering plans for a canidrome in the New Territories.

1971: Viceroy Cup holders Eastern started off their season with a 5-0 thrashing of Tsun Wan before 6,550 spectators at Boundary Street.

Around the world

1506: Andrea Mantegna, one of the great Italian painters, died.

1598: King Philip II of Spain died; he led Spain through wars with the Ottoman Empire and England.

1759: British troops under General James Wolfe defeated the French in the battle of the Plains of Abraham, near Quebec, sealing British supremacy in Canada. Wolfe was killed.

1788: New York was declared the first federal capital of the United States.

1922: The highest recorded temperature in the shade, 58 degrees Celsius, was recorded at Al Aziziyah, Libya.

1942: The German army began an all-out attack on Stalingrad.

1959: Luna 2, a Soviet probe, became the first spacecraft to reach the moon.

1971: Thirty-one prisoners and 11 guards died when state police and National Guardsmen stormed Attica prison in New York state to end a five-day revolt.

1974: Japanese guerillas took the French ambassador and 10 other people hostage in the Netherlands; they surrendered four days later after flying to Damascus.

1977: American conductor Leopold Stokowski died aged 95. He directed the New York Philharmonic and formed the American Symphony Orchestra.

1988: A Cuban diplomat, Carlos Manuel Medina Perez, was ordered to leave Britain after he shot at a secret service agent in London.

1989: Archbishop Desmond Tutu led large crowds through central Cape Town in the biggest anti-apartheid protest march in South Africa for 30 years.

1990: The US Senate approved a bill imposing sanctions against Iraq and a stringent review of exports to it, Iran, Syria and Libya.

1991: The Soviet Union and the US agreed to cut off arms supplies to the warring sides in Afghanistan.

1993: Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation signed a peace agreement outlining a plan for Palestinian self-rule in the occupied territories.

1994: North Korea allowed UN nuclear inspectors into two atomic sites previously off limits to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

1999: On the sixth anniversary of their first interim peace deal, Israel and the Palestinians formally launched talks on a final settlement they hoped to achieve within one year.



Today in history