In Hong Kong 1960: Hyram Moylan, a visiting American travel executive, said Hong Kong should build more first-class hotels near its beaches. He believed Hong Kong could well become the 'Paris of the Orient' and overtake Tokyo as the region's showpiece. 1964: Run Run Shaw flew to Singapore to help with the police search for his abducted son, Vee-ming. The 32-year-old was eventually released after 12 days blindfolded in a bare cement-floored room. 1971: Hollywood producer Howard Minsky arrived in Hong Kong to promote his film, Love Story, starring Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal. 1975: Terry Jacks, the Canadian singer who had a worldwide smash hit with the song Seasons In The Sun, arrived in Hong Kong. Around the world 1904: The Russo-Japanese War began when Japanese forces stormed Port Arthur (Lushun). They were victorious after an 11-month siege. 1915: D W Griffith's silent-movie epic about the American Civil War, The Birth Of A Nation, premiered in Los Angeles. 1922: United States president Warren Harding had a radio set installed in the White House. 1924: The first execution by gas in the US took place at Nevada State Prison in Carson City. 1937: General Francisco Franco captured Malaga with the help of 15,000 Italians during the Spanish Civil War. 1949: Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty of Hungary was sentenced to life-imprisonment for anti-state activities. 1963: Iraqi president Abdel-Karim Kassem was overthrown and killed in a military coup. 1967: Victor Gollancz, the publisher and writer, died. He helped Jewish refugees flee Germany during World War II. 1973: US Senate leaders named seven members of a select committee to investigate the Watergate scandal. 1974: America's final Skylab mission returned to earth. 1983: The Kahan Report on the September 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut found Israeli leaders, including defence minister Ariel Sharon, indirectly responsible for the killings by Lebanese Christian militiamen who rampaged through the Palestinian refugee camps surrounded by Israeli forces. 1989: An American airliner taking Italian tourists to a Caribbean holiday crashed in the Azores, killing all 144 passengers. 1993: An Iranian airliner crashed after a collision with a military Sukhoi plane. All 132 people on board the Soviet-made Tupolev died. 1997: A gunman shot six people dead in the North Island town of Raurimu, New Zealand. 2000: A House of Representatives committee opened hearings into former-US president Bill Clinton's last-minute pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich. Former prosecutors complained they had not been involved in Clinton's decision. 2001: Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed to an offer by public prosecutors under which he would pay a 300,000 mark (HK$1.1 million) fine to end a fraud probe against him over secret cash donations he was alleged to have accepted while in power.
