1993 - Actor Brandon Lee, the 28-year-old son of the late Kung Fu star Bruce Lee, was killed when a small explosive charge used to simulate gunfire went off inside a grocery bag during filming on a movie set in Wilmington, North Carolina. Lee, who many believed was on the threshold of stardom similar to that attained by his father two decades earlier, had been working on the $14 million movie The Crow. Lee played a rock star brought back from the grave who adopts the persona of a night bird to avenge his own and his girlfriend’s untimely deaths. For the scene directed by Alex Proyas, Lee was walking through a doorway carrying the grocery bag as another actor fired blanks at him from 15 feet away, police said.
Other important events
1683 - Poland forms alliance with Holy Roman Empire against Turks.
1889 - French engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel unfurls the French tricolour from atop the Eiffel Tower on its completion.
1917 - United States takes possession of the Virgin Islands from Denmark.
1923 - First US dance marathon, held in New York City, ends with Alma Cummings setting a world record of 27 hours on her feet.
1946 - The first election is held in Greece after Second World War.
1966 - British Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s Labour Party wins the general election with an increased majority of 96.
1979 - Arab League imposes economic boycott of Egypt.
1980 - Jesse Owens, the black track star, dies of lung cancer at the age of 66.
1986 - A Mexican airliner carrying 166 people crashes in flames near the capital, Mexico City, killing all aboard.
1987 - About 800 leftist guerrillas kill 43 soldiers and a US military adviser in attack on major army base in El Salvador.
1992 - UN Security Council imposes aviation, arms and diplomatic sanctions against Libya.
1994 - Al Ain International Airport is officially inaugurated.
1995 - A Romanian passenger jet crashes near Bucharest shortly after departing for Brussels, killing all 58 people aboard.
1998 - A plane carrying Britain’s Leeds United football team crash-lands in flames just after takeoff at Stansted airport, no casualties reported.
2006 - Three strong earthquakes and several aftershocks reduce villages to rubble in western Iran, killing at least 70 people.
2007 - The first Earth Hour is held in Sydney, Australia.
2010 - Shaikh Ahmad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who died when the glider carrying him crashed over a lake in Rabat, Morocco, laid to rest in Abu Dhabi.
2014 - Anne Hidalgo becomes first female mayor of Paris.
2015 - Muhammadu Buhari wins Nigeria presidential election.
2016 - A flyover under construction in Kolkata collapses, killing at least 25 people.
2017 - A landslide kills 254 people, injures 400 in southern Colombia.
