2002 - Humanity and computer-lovers can all be happy. The much hyped Man vs Machine, the Brains in Bahrain chess battle between World Champion Vladimir Kramnik and the German-made super computer Deep Fritz ended in a draw after only 21 moves. The eight-game match, which was held at the Bahrain Minds Sports in Muharraq under the auspices of Shaikh Hamad Bin Eisa Al Khalifa, King of Bahrain. The eighth and final game was drawn on Kramnik’s offer after he played 21.Qd2. He hadn’t won a game since the third. He took the first half of the match 3-1, and Fritz the second half by the same score. Kramnik will get $700,000 (Dh2.57 million).
Other important events
1781 - British troops under Lord Cornwallis surrender at Virginia, ending the American Revolution.
1933 - Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.
1950 - UN forces enter Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
1951 - US President Harry Truman formally ends the state of war with Germany.
1953 - TWA launches the first regularly scheduled non-stop transcontinental air service between New York and Los Angeles.
1960 - US imposes an embargo on exports to Cuba covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products.
1983 - Grenada’s Prime Minister Maurice Bishop is shot and killed in an army takeover.
1984 - A young Polish priest, the Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko, is abducted and murdered by Communist secret police.
1985 - Former British prime minister James Callaghan announces his retirement from the House of Commons after 40 years.
1986 - Mozambique’s President Samora Machel dies in plane crash in eastern South Africa.
1987 - The stock market crashes as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 508 points, its biggest-ever percentage drop in decades.
1988 - At least 164 people are killed in twin plane crashes in India.
1990 - The Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopts a long-awaited plan to reform the nation’s economy.
1993 - Benazir Bhutto is sworn in as prime minister of Pakistan for a second term.
1995 - A powerful bomb explodes at Sri Lanka’s main oil storage tank in a Colombo suburb.
1996 - Chechen separatists install their military commander Aslan Maskhadov as prime minister of a makeshift coalition government.
2001 - Kjell Magne Bondevik becomes Prime Minister of Norway.
2003 - Pope John Paul II beatifies Mother Teresa during a ceremony in St. Peter’s Square.
2006 - Ras Al Khaimah receives its first European chartered flight carrying 166 tourists.
2010 - Islamist insurgents, including a suicide bomber, storm Chechnya’s Parliament, leaving six people dead.
2012 - Wissam Al Hassan, the head of a Lebanese intelligence agency, is killed in a car bomb in Beirut.
2013 - A suicide bomber kills at least 15 people outside a restaurant in Baladweyne, central Somalia.
2015 - Libya’s internationally recognised government rejects a UN proposal for a power-sharing arrangement with rival Islamist-led authorities.
2016 - Saudi Arabia issues record £17.5 billion (Dh84.75 billion) of government debt to raise money after oil price slump.
