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SCMP Reporter

In Hong Kong

1960: An American firm incorporated in Hong Kong bought the northern half of the Murray Parade Ground for $14.25 million. The firm, Messrs Wynncor, of Jardine House, planned to build a 25-storey, 1,000-room luxury hotel at an estimated cost of $60 million.

1963: The thermostat hit 35.1 degrees Celsius, the second hottest temperature ever recorded in Hong Kong. The highest temperature was 36 degrees Celsius on August 19, 1900, according to the Royal Observatory.

1966: A parcel of diamonds valued at GBP77,000 went missing on a flight between Johannesburg and Hong Kong via London. It was suggested the stones went astray or were stolen at London airport after arriving from South Africa.

1968: In football, Kwok Moon-wah, Hong Kong's leading goal scorer this season, was suspended by the Hong Kong Football Association until October 31. The suspension meant he would miss the first two months of the next season.

1976: Patricia Hy won the under-11 title in a tennis tournament organised by the Hong Kong Lawn Tennis Association. She would later emigrate to Canada and turn professional.

Around the world

1431: After being handed over by the church, which judged her a heretic, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake at Rouen, France, by the English and their French collaborators. She was canonised in 1920.

1912: Wilbur Wright, pioneering aviator, died. With his brother Orville, he made the first airplane flight in 1903.

1913: The First Balkan War between Turkey and the Balkan states ended with the signing of the Treaty of London.

1960: Boris Pasternak, Russian novelist and poet, famed for his masterpiece Doctor Zhivago, died in Moscow.

1961: General Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic, was assassinated on the way to his farm.

1967: Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jordan's King Hussein signed a mutual defence treaty, prompting Israel to strike pre-emptively a week later, starting the Six-Day War.

1981: President Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh was shot dead by rebel officers in Chittagong in an attempted coup by Major General Manzur Ahmed.

1992: The United Nations Security Council voted to impose economic sanctions against Yugoslavia in a bid to halt fighting in Bosnia.

1999: Fifty-two people were crushed to death when hundreds ran into an underground railway station to escape a hailstorm that interrupted an outdoor rock concert in the Belarussian capital Minsk.

2001: Former French foreign minister Roland Dumas was found guilty of receiving illegal funds from oil giant Elf

Aquitaine and sentenced to six months in prison.

2001: In Germany's last trials surrounding World War II, a court sentenced to life in prison Anton Malloth, an 89-year-old former Nazi SS guard, for beating and kicking a Jewish inmate to death.



Today in history