On This Day in History

A magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck Tonghai County in southern China, killing at least 10,000 people and eventually spurring the creation of the nation's largest earthquake monitoring system.

The bulk carrier Lake Illawarra struck a bridge over the River Derwent in Hobart, Australia, causing the deaths of seven of the ship's crewmen and five motorists on the bridge.

The Troubles: In response to the killings of six Catholics the previous night, South Armagh Republican Action Force gunmen killed ten Protestants in County Armagh, Northern Ireland.

Georgian troops attacked Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, beginning the First South Ossetia War.

The embassy of the United States to Somalia was evacuated by helicopter airlift days after violence enveloped Mogadishu during the Somali Civil War.

Sri Lankan Tamil politician Kumar Ponnambalam was killed in an assassination suspected to have been sanctioned by President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

The Metropolitan Police arrested six people in conjunction with an alleged terrorist plot to release ricin on the London Underground, although no toxin was found.

The dwarf planet Eris was discovered by a team using images from the Samuel Oschin telescope at Palomar Observatory.

The Taiwan High Speed Rail opened, connecting Taipei and Kaohsiung.

Mikheil Saakashvili was decisively re-elected as President of Georgia in "the first genuinely competitive presidential election" in the history of the country.

In Eng Foong Ho v Attorney-General, the Court of Appeal of Singapore held that equality before the law was satisfied by a "reasonable nexus" between state action and the object of the law.