This Day in History — Feburary 1
Today is the 32nd day of 2017. There are 333 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1991: South African President F W de Klerk announces that he will scrap all remaining laws that uphold apartheid.
OTHER EVENTS
1587: England’s Queen Elizabeth I signs warrant for execution of Mary Queen of Scots.
1775: Peasants in Bohemia revolt against servitude.
1881: First signs of nationalist movement appear in Egypt as military officers stage uprising.
1896: Crete, inspired by Greece, begins revolution against Turkey.
1899: US flag is raised over Pacific island of Guam, formerly under Spanish control.
1908: Portugal’s King Carlos I and Crown Prince are murdered in Lisbon, Manuel II becomes king.
1917: Germany decides to let its submarines attack merchant ships from neutral nations going to Britain, a move that triggers the United States’ entry into World War I.
1924: Britain recognises communist Government of Soviet Union.
1935: Italy sends troops to East Africa.
1946: Trygve Lie, Norwegian socialist, is elected United Nations secretary-general; Hungarian Republic is proclaimed.
1959: Swiss referendum rejects female suffrage in federal elections.
1968: Central pacific nation of Nauru becomes independent.
1972: British Embassy in Dublin is bombed as anti-British demonstrations sweep Ireland.
1990: Romanian National Salvation Front agrees to a power-sharing arrangement until national elections can be held.
1992: US President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign Camp David declaration stating Russia and United States do not regard each other as potential adversaries, formally ending the Cold War.
1993: Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin announces he will accept the return of 100 deported Palestinians.
1995: Flooded rivers make refugees of almost 250,000 people in the Netherlands.
1996: President Jacques Chirac announces that France has finished its nuclear testing “once and for all”.
1997: An Air Senegal plane carrying European tourists crashes in Senegal, killing at least 20 people and injuring 30.
1998: Miguel Angel Rodriguez wins the presidency in Costa Rica.
1999: Thousands of people flee the capital of Guinea-Bissau as fighting intensifies between loyalist and rebel forces.
2001: US President George W Bush unveils a plan to spend $1 billion over five years on the New Freedom Initiative, programmes to help disabled Americans buy homes and stay in the workforce.
2002: Fighters loyal to Afghan warlord Bacha Khan retreat from the city of Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, after several days of heavy fighting between his forces and the local council, which rejects his leadership. About 60 people are killed.
2003: The US space shuttle Columbia breaks apart as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere at the end of a 16-day scientific mission, killing its seven crew members and scattering debris across Texas and Louisiana states.
2004: US President George W Bush, under mounting political pressure, plans to sign an executive order to establish a full-blown investigation of US intelligence failures that led to the invasion of Iraq.
2005: Rebels attack a Colombian military post in south-west Colombia with home-made rockets, killing nine soldiers and wounding 20.
2006: A US Government audit finds guerrilla attacks in Iraq have forced the cancellation of more than 60 per cent of water and sanitation projects, in part because American intelligence failed to predict the brutal insurgency.
2007: Suspected Muslim guerrillas storm a Philippine jail in the southern city of Kidapawan and blast a hole through a wall, freeing three alleged bombers and dozens of other inmates.
2008: Two female suicide bombers with a history of psychiatric treatment kill almost 100 people at two pet markets in central Baghdad. Iraqi and US officials have said the women may have been unwitting bombers strapped with remote-control explosives.
2009: Gunmen abduct American UN worker John Solecki in Quetta, Pakistan, and kills his driver.
2010: A female suicide bomber detonates her explosives inside a way station for Shiite pilgrims in Iraq, killing 54 people and rattling security officials who are struggling against a possible rise in violence before key elections next month.
2011: President Hosni Mubarak announces he will not run for a new term in September elections, but rejects protesters’ demands to step down immediately and leave the country, vowing to die on Egypt’s soil, after a dramatic day in which a quarter-million Egyptians stage their biggest protest yet calling on him to go.
2012: At least 74 people are killed and 248 injured after soccer fans rush the field in the seaside city of Port Said following an upset victory by the home team over Egypt’s top club, setting off clashes and a stampede as riot police largely fail to intervene.
2013: Hillary Rodham Clinton formerly resigns as US secretary of state, capping a four-year tenure that saw her shatter records for number of countries visited. John Kerry was sworn in to replace her.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Feodor Chaliapin, Russian opera singer (1873-1938); Victor Herbert, US composer (1859-1924); Clark Gable, US actor (1901-1960); Renata Tebaldi, Italian opera singer (1922-2004); Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, Russian president (1931-2007); Don Everly, US singer w/pop group Everly Brothers (1937-), Sherman Hemsley, US actor (1938-2012), Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’s daughter (1968-); Michael C Hall, US actor (1971-)
—AP