1945: One day after Egypt does so, Turkey declares war on Germany.
1949: Amin Maalouf, the great Lebanese novelist, essayist and librettist, is born in Beirut. Writing in French, his Rock of Tanios wins France's Prix Goncourt in 1993.
1950: Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah becomes Kuwait’s ruler and a pivotal figure in Kuwait’s slow crawl toward independence from Britain, granted on June 18 1961.
Kuwait’s National Day is celebrated on Feb. 25, however, in commemoration of the day Abdullah claimed the throne.
- Kuwait: Country Profile
- Free Expression’s Foes in Kuwait and Israel
- Curtsey to Theocrats: Kuwait Bans Transvestites
- Glossary: Gulf Cooperation Council
1954: Gamal Abdul Nasser names himself prime minister of Egypt, ousting Maj. Gen. Mohammed Naguib, who had been Egypt’s “iron man” president and prime minister. Naguib had demanded “absolute autocratic authority,” according to Nasser—who went on to wield absolute autocratic authority, and remarkably erratic judgment, until his death in 1970.
1972: West Germany pays a $5 million ransom to Palestinian hijackers holding 172 passengers and 14 crew members aboard a Lufthansa Boeing 747 that had been en route from New Delhi to Athens. The hijackers, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, diverted the plane to Aden, in Yemen, where they released the passengers, but not the crew members—whom they subsequently released only after rigging the plane with explosives.
1991: In the Gulf War, an Iraqi Scud missile strikes an American barracks in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, killing 27 Americans and wounding 98. The barracks housed the 475th Quartermaster Group, an Army Reserve unit based in Farrell, Pa., near the Ohio state line.
1994: Baruch Goldstein, a fanatic 37-year-old Jewish settler of Qiryat Arba, in the West Bank, massacres 40 Palestinian Muslims as they knelt in Friday prayer in a Hebron mosque. It is one of the bloodiest days of the Israeli occupation since Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Arabs riot, provoking Israeli military retaliations that kill 10 more Arabs.
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