Following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 8:
1921 – Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato was assassinated by anarchists near his home in Madrid.
1994 – Sixty-four people were killed and 370 injured when a train packed with mainly black commuters was derailed near Durban, South Africa.
1999 – The New York Yankees baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, briefly married to Marilyn Monroe, died aged 84.
2001 – A Chilean appeals court ruled 2-1 that former dictator Augusto Pinochet could be tried for human rights abuses that occurred after his 1973 coup.
2005 – The Chechen rebel leader and former elected president Aslan Maskhadov was killed by Russian troops fighting to quell a long rebellion in the mainly Muslim Caucasus region.
2007 – The Republic of Cyprus dismantled a key concrete barrier that divided the island’s capital Nicosia for decades, calling on Turkey to respond by withdrawing its troops from the area.
2007 – Cruz Hernandez, a Salvadoran woman believed to be 128 years old and possibly the world’s oldest person, died.
2011 – Actor Ben Affleck attends House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing on Africa.
2012 – Female-only internet cafe opens in Kabul.
2012 – Modern Olympic memorabilia including torch from 1948 auctioned.
2017 – Storms destroy Azure Window, a natural arch on Maltese island Gozo.
(Reuters)
