Following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 9:
1901 – Australia’s first parliament opened in Melbourne.
1926 – Americans Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett became the first people to fly over the North Pole.
1927 – Canberra replaced Melbourne as the capital of Australia.
1978 – The body of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was found in the boot of a car in Rome; he had been kidnapped and murdered by the Red Brigades.
1986 – Sherpa Tenzing Norgay died; he shared with Edmund Hillary the achievement of being the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953.
2001 – A total of 126 people died after a stampede at Accra’s main football stadium when police fired teargas at rioting fans. It was Africa’s worst football disaster.
2001 – Nicos Sampson, leader of a brief Greek-inspired coup which prompted the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, died aged 66.
2002 – A radio-controlled landmine exploded in Kaspiisk in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan killing 42 people and wounding 150 during a Victory Day parade.
2004 – Chechnya’s Moscow-backed president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed when a bomb blast tore through a packed stadium in Grozny.
2014 – 111-year-old Alexander Imich certified as world’s oldest living man.
2015 – Russia’s Victory Day parade in Moscow marks 70th anniversary of end of World War Two.
(Reuters)
