The Baltic exchange offices at 30 St Mary Axe were partially demolished, and the rest of the building extensively damaged by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb attack. The bomb was concealed in a large white truck. It killed three people and injured 91. The bomb also caused damage to surrounding buildings. The IRA, fighting to end British rule in Northern Ireland, issued a statement in Dublin claiming responsibility for the bomb and warning of more to come. The 50kg bomb rocked the heart of the city, the hub of the capital’s financial centre, as traders celebrated a jump in share values following the right-wing Conservative Party’s fourth election victory in a row. The explosion close to the Baltic Exchange, the world’s leading international shipping market, gouged a four-metre crater in the road and left victims lacerated and bloody from flying glass. All the windows in two 25-storey blocks were shattered and police were checking structural damage to nearby buildings.
Other important events:
1864 Archduke Maximilian of Austria accepts the title of Emperor of Mexico.
1912 The Titanic sets sail on its ill-fated maiden voyage.
1919 Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is killed in an army ambush in Chinameca, Mexico.
1932 Paul von Hindenburg is re-elected German president over Adolf Hitler.
1941 A Nazi puppet state is formed in Croatia.
1944 The Soviet Red Army recaptures the Ukrainian port city of Odessa.
1945 US troops liberate a Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany.
1959 Japan’s Crown Prince Akihito marries a commoner, Michiko Shoda.
1963 The nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher fails to surface off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in a disaster that claims 129 lives.
1972 The United States and Soviet Union sign a treaty banning biological warfare.
1981 Imprisoned Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands wins election to the British Parliament.
1983 Essam Sartawi, a key Palestine Liberation Organisation peacemaker, is assassinated in Portugal.
1988 An army ammunition dump explodes near Rawalpindi, Pakistan, killing more than 100 people.
1990 A Frenchwoman and a Belgian man are freed after two-and-a-half years in captivity in Lebanon.
1992 John Major wins election and becomes British prime minister.
1993 Chris Hani, one of South Africa’s top black leaders, is murdered.
1995 Former Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai dies at the age of 81.
1997 The newly-renovated 175-year-old Sharjah Old Fort is opened.
1998 The British and Irish governments join with the Ulster parties to seal a historic pact.
2001 South Africa becomes the first country in the world to approve a solution that can be used in place of blood in transfusions.
2008 Nepal holds its first election in nine years.
2009 Abdul Aziz Bouteflika wins a third term as president of Algeria.
2010 Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country’s highest military and civilian leaders are killed in the plane crash in western Russia.
2013 British scientist and test-tube baby pioneer Robert Edwards dies at the age of 87.
2014 Dubai launches $1.5 million (Dh5.51 million) World Peace award to a person or organisation.
2015 31 schoolchildren are killed in a head-on collision between a truck and a bus that caught fire in Morocco.
2016 Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk resigns, paving the way for new government.
