Sunday Times, Australia
Advertiser, Australia
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
Nov 30 2004

On this day

30nov04

1988 – Ethnic clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis kill 11
people in five Armenian cities.

1652 – Dutch defeat English fleet off Dungeness, England.
1710 – Turkey declares war on Russia.
1718 – Sweden’s “warrior king” Charles XII dies at Fredrikshald in
Norway after being hit by a bullet in the head. The day was later
declared a holiday for Swedish nationalists.
1782 – Americans and British sign preliminary peace articles in
Paris, ending American Revolutionary War.
1804 – US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase goes on trial, accused
of political bias. He is acquitted by the Senate.
1833 – Eight people die when brig Ann Jamieson explodes while moored
at King’s Wharf, Sydney.
1838 – Mexico declares war on France after French occupation of Vera
Cruz.
1853 – Turkish fleet is destroyed by Russia off Sinope.
1900 – Death of Irish-born author Oscar Wilde.
1901 – Death of Australian explorer Edward John Eyre.
1913 – Actor Charlie Chaplin makes film debut in Holywood’s Making a
Living.
1918 – Transylvania proclaims union with Romania.
1934 – Moroccan Nationalist movement is founded.
1938 – Members of Romanian Iron Guard are shot as government attempts
to destroy fascism.
1939 – The Soviet Union invades Finland.
1949 – Chinese Communists capture city of Chungking.
1953 – A US delegate charges before the UN General Assembly in New
York that Russians headed Korean prison camps where 38,000 Allied
troops and Korean civilians were victims of Communist atrocities
during the War.
1962 – U Thant of Burma is elected UN Secretary-General, succeeding
the late Dag Hammarskjold.
1964 – Soviet Union launches spacecraft toward Mars in apparent race
with US Mariner 4.
1966 – The former British colony of Barbados gains independence.
1967 – Aden, South Yemen and Protectorate of South Arabia gain
independence from Britain.
1971 – US President Richard Nixon authorises Import-Export Bank to
extend credit to Romania, ending three-year ban on US
government-backed credits to Communist-bloc nations.
1975 – Four Timorese parties proclaim independence of the territory
and its integration with Indonesia.
1980 – The Uruguayan military dictatorship loses a plebiscite to
amend the constitution.
1981 – The United States and the Soviet Union open negotiations in
Geneva aimed at reducing nuclear weapons in Europe.
1988 – Ethnic clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis kill 11
people in five Armenian cities.
1989 – Terrorists kill West German banker Alfred Herrhausen.
1990 – US President George Bush announces he will send Secretary of
State Jim Baker to Baghdad to invite the Iraqi foreign minister to
the White House in a last effort to reach a peaceful end to the
Persian Gulf crisis.
1991 – Fighting escalates in Croatia despite cease-fire as UN envoy
Cyrus Vance prepares for talks on deploying up to 10,000 UN
peacekeepers in Yugoslavia.
1992 – The European Community agrees to speed up expulsions of bogus
asylum seekers, and turns down an appeal by Germany to share the
influx of refugees.
1993 – In Belfast, Northern Ireland, gunmen murder a Catholic factory
worker while politicians talk of peace; US President Bill Clinton
signs into law the Brady bill, which requires a five-day waiting
period for handgun purchases and background checks of prospective
buyers.
1994 – Flames roar through the cruise ship Achille Lauro off Somalia.
The ship, which was hijacked by PLO terrorists in 1985, sinks two
days later.
1995 – The UN Security Council votes unanimously to end its
three-and-a-half-year-old peacekeeping mission in Bosnia by January
31, 1996; US President Bill Clinton becomes the first US chief
executive to visit Northern Ireland.
1996 – Rallying against Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who
annulled opposition victories in local elections, 150,000 people
march through the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade.
1997 – The UN mission in Haiti officially ends.
1998 – The British hospital where General Augusto Pinochet is staying
says he doesn’t need medical care – a blow to the Chilean
ex-dictator’s plan to plead he is too ill to stand trial for
extradition to Spain.
1999 – The opening of a 135-nation trade gathering in Seattle is
disrupted by at least 40,000 demonstrators, some of whom clash with
police.
2000 – South and North Korean relatives, separated for half a
century, are reunited in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
2001 – Robert Durst, 58, an estranged member of a prominent New York
City real estate family, is arrested in Pennsylvania after a 45-day
manhunt. He is charged with killing and dismembering his neighbour,
71-year-old Morris Black, in Texas.
2002 – Egypt’s foreign minister urges America and other nations to
help halt Mid-East violence, and says the international community has
reacted weakly to Israeli attacks on Palestinians.
2003 – Time magazine reports that 140 of the roughly 660 prisoners
detained at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were due
to be released at a “politically propitious time”.