On this day: 167 workers die in Piper Alpha oil platform explosion

The North Sea Piper Alpha oil rig disaster killed 167 people

National day of Malawi.

1854: United States Republican Party was established at Ripon, Wisconsin.

1859: Queensland, Australia, became a colony in its own right, separate from New South Wales.

1875: Institute of Bankers in Scotland formed – the first such body in the world.

1885: Louis Pasteur successfully treated a subject with anti-rabies vaccine.

1912: Fifth Olympic Games opened in Stockholm.

1916: David Lloyd-George was appointed War Secretary.

1919: The first transatlantic flight by an airship, from East Fortune, East Lothian to Mineola, New York took 108 hours.

1923: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was formed.

1928: The first all-talking feature film, Lights Of New York, opened in America.

1942: Ann Frank’s family went into hiding in Amsterdam.

1946: The Young Conservatives’ political organisation was founded.

1950: The frontier between East Germany and Poland was declared to be the Oder-Neisse Line.

1964: Malawi, formerly Nyasaland, became an independent state within the Commonwealth, having been a British protectorate since 1891.

1967: Civil war began in Nigeria, with fighting between federal troops and men from Biafra province.

1968: Billie Jean King became Wimbledon Women’s Singles champion in the first year of open tennis.

1988: 167 workers died in the Piper Alpha oil platform explosion in the North Sea.

1989: Time and date digits were in sequence at 01.23.45 6-7-89. It would not happen again for 100 years.

1989: Collett’s bookshop in Charing Cross Road, London, was fire-bombed in protest at sale of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.

1991: United Nations nuclear inspection team arrived in Iraq to test president Saddam Hussein’s promise of full co-operation, while second team witnessed destruction of Iraq’s last known long-range missiles.

2003: The Eupatoria Planetary Radar sent messages to five stars; the message sent to the furthest-away star will arrive in 2049.

2006: The Nathula Pass between India and China, sealed during the Sino-Indian War, reopened for trade after 44 years.