Advertiser Adelaide, Australia
Sunday Times.au, Australia
The Mercury, Australia
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
March 12 2005
On this day
March 12
1992 – A ceasefire is shattered when the city of Agdam comes under
heavy shelling that kills 25 people in the battle over the Armenian
enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
641 AD – Chinese Princess Wen Cheng goes to Tibet to marry the
Tibetan ruler and the marriage becomes the basis for China’s claim to
sovereignty over the region.
1609 – Bermuda becomes a British colony.
1789 – The post office is established in the United States.
1799 – Austria declares war on France.
1814 – British troops under Wellington capture Bordeaux in France.
1848 – Revolution breaks out in Vienna with university
demonstrations.
1849 – In India, the Sikhs surrender to the British at Rawalpindi.
1854 – Britain and France conclude alliance with Turkey against
Russia; In Sydney, James O’Farrell attempts to shoot visiting Duke of
Edinburgh, Prince Alfred, in the back.
1868 – Britain annexes Basutoland, South Africa.
1894 – Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time.
1907 – At Toulon, France, the battleship Iena explodes, killing at
least 118 men.
1912 – Juliette Gordon Low founds the Girl Guides, which later
becomes the Girl Scouts of America.
1913 – Canberra becomes the capital of Australia when the foundation
stone of the Federal Parliament building is laid.
1925 – Death of Sun Yat-sen, Chinese revolutionary leader.
1930 – Mahatma Gandhi opens civil disobedience campaign in India
against British.
1932 – The so-called Swedish Match King, Ivar Kreuger, commits
suicide in Paris, leaving behind a financial empire that turns out to
be worthless.
1939 – Pope Pius XII is formally crowned in ceremonies at the
Vatican.
1940 – Finland signs a peace treaty with the Soviet Union in World
War II, ending the 14-week war which the Russians won by sheer weight
of numbers.
1945 – Anne Frank, the Dutch Jewish teenager who kept a diary of her
wartime experiences, dies in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in
Germany, aged 15.
1947 – US President Harry Truman establishes what becomes known as
the Truman Doctrine to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism.
1966 – General Suharto is sworn in as acting president of Indonesia
after President Sukarno is stripped of authority.
1968 – Indian Ocean island Mauritius, a British colony, proclaims its
independence.
1969 – Beatle Paul McCartney marries Linda Eastman in London.
1971 – Syrian Premier Hafez al-Assad is elected president in a
national referendum.
1972 – Britain and China agree to exchange ambassadors, 22 years
after London first recognised the Peking government.
1978 – In the first round of French parliamentary elections, the Left
claims an absolute majority for the first time in French history.
1979 – In Grenada, Prime Minister Sir Erik Gairy and his government
are overthrown and replaced by Maurice Bishop of the New Jewel
Movement.
1984 – Nationwide strike of British miners begins.
1988 – South African government bans church-led opposition group
headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as “threat to public safety”.
1989 – Students and workers demanding overthrow of President Roh
Tae-woo battle riot police in Seoul, Korea.
1992 – A ceasefire is shattered when the city of Agdam comes under
heavy shelling that kills 25 people in the battle over the Armenian
enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
1993 – At least 200 people are killed and 1,100 injured when a series
of bombs explode in Bombay, India; Janet Reno is sworn in as
America’s first female attorney general.
1994 – Church of England breaks with 460 years of male dominance when
it ordains its first female priests in Bristol Cathedral.
1995 – Melinda Gainsford becomes the first Australian to win a world
sprint title in more than 30 years, in the world indoor 200m.
1996 – China begins new war games in the Taiwan Strait in a show of
force that uses jets and warships to drive home its warning to Taiwan
not to seek independence.
1997 – Burundi authorities arrest five people, including two
soldiers, after they attempted to kill Burundian leader Major Pierre
Buyoya.
1999 – US-born violinist and music teacher Sir Yehudi Menuhin dies in
Berlin.
1999 – Confidential medical records about the Queen and other members
of the royal family are found by a man walking his dog on a riverbank
in south-western Scotland.
2000 – Attackers wound leading Iranian reformist Saeed Hajjarian, a
close confidant of President Mohammad Khatami, shooting him once in
the face. He was the focus of hardliners’ anger after the reformist
sweep of parliamentary elections; In one of the most significant acts
of his papacy, Pope John Paul asks forgiveness for the many past sins
of his Church, including its treatment of Jews, heretics and women.
2001 – A US Navy jet mistakenly drops a bomb on a group of military
personnel at a bombing range in Kuwait, killing five Americans and
one New Zealander.
2001 – Thousands of Iraqis begin military training when President
Saddam Hussein orders the formation of 21 military units. As many as
seven million have volunteered to fight with the Palestinians against
Israel.
2002 – The UN Security Council approves a US-sponsored resolution
endorsing a Palestinian state for the first time.
2003 – Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic dies after being struck
by two bullets as he walked from his car to a government building in
Belgrade.
2004 – Iran abruptly freezes further UN inspections of its nuclear
program for six weeks, throwing into turmoil international attempts
to verify Tehran’s claims that it is developing atomic power and not
weapons.