Following are some of the major events to have occurred on October 8:
1912 – Montenegro declared war on Turkey, beginning the First Balkan War.
1953 – The British contralto Kathleen Ferrier died of cancer at the peak of her career, aged 41.
1967 – Clement Attlee, British Labour Party prime minister from 1945 to 1951, died.
1982 – The Polish parliament dissolved Solidarity, formally ending eastern Europe’s first experiment in trade union democracy.
1997 – Tung Chee-hwa became the first Chinese leader to address Hong Kong’s legislature, 100 days after Britain ceded the territory to China.
1998 – Japan formally apologised to South Korea for 35 years of harsh colonial rule.
2000 – A Syrian plane carrying officials, doctors and medical supplies landed in Baghdad, the first flight from Damascus to Baghdad in two decades.
2001 – A Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) plane crashed into an airport hangar at Milan’s Linate airport after hitting a small private plane in heavy fog. All 110 people on the airliner, four on the private plane and four baggage handlers were killed.
2004 – The Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai won the Nobel peace prize. She rose to international fame for campaigns against government-backed forest clearances in Kenya in the late 1980s and 1990s.
2005 – More than 73,000 people were killed and about 3 million became homeless when an earthquake hit Pakistani Kashmir and neighbouring North West Frontier Province. Another 1,300 died in Indian Kashmir.
2010 – Chefs in Turkey cook the world’s largest omelette.
(Reuters)
