Today in history, October 30: Ali regains heavyweight title

Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout on this day in 1974, regaining his world heavyweight title. 

Highlights in history on this date:

1922: Benito Mussolini forms a fascist government, becomes premier of Italy.
1930: Treaty of friendship between Greece and Turkey is signed in Ankara.
1938: A radio dramatisation of the HG Wells novel War of the Worlds causes mass panic in the United States.
1956: Britain and France issue an ultimatum to Egypt and Israel, calling for a ceasefire.
1972: In Canada, Pierre Trudeau and his Liberal Party narrowly win the general election.
1974: Muhammad Ali knocks out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, to regain his world heavyweight title.
1987: Faith — George Michael’s debut album — is released.

1989: Riot police in Moscow repeatedly charge at club demonstrators after a candlelight vigil outside KGB headquarters in memory of Stalin’s victims.
1995: Quebec holds a referendum on independence from Canada, voting against separation by 50.6 per cent to 49.4 per cent.
1996: An Ethiopian air force plane crashes in a market east of the capital, Addis Ababa, killing eight people and setting 50 homes and shops on fire.
1997: Sri Lanka’s air force begins recruiting women to train as pilots for cockpits left vacant by the deaths of airmen in the country’s civil war.
1998: While cracking down on the militant Hamas movement, the Palestinian Authority cabinet ratifies the Wye land-for-peace accord.
1999: The last Indonesian troop ship sails out of East Timor, ending a bloody 24-year military engagement in the now independent nation.
2000: A Spanish Supreme Court judge, his bodyguard and chauffeur are killed and 35 others are injured when a suspected Basque separatist car bomb rocks a busy residential area in the country’s south during morning peak hour.

2001: The US releases a new list of about 200 individuals it suspects of having links to the September 11 attacks; Ukraine destroys its last nuclear missile silo, fulfilling a pledge to give up the vast nuclear arsenal it inherited after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
2002: The Irish Republican Army breaks off negotiations with an independent disarmament commission over talks on scrapping weapons — a key goal of Northern Ireland’s four-year-old peace accord.
2003: An army of 13,000 US firefighters struggles to contain the worst wildfires in California in years. Twenty people die and thousands of homes are destroyed.
2004: Osama bin Laden issues his first videotaped message in more than a year to deride US President George W. Bush and warn of possible new September 11-style attacks.
2005: A group with possible ties to Kashmir’s most feared militants claims responsibility for a series of terrorist bombings that killed 59 people in New Delhi the previous night.
2006: Three people are killed in Algeria when two truck bombs explode minutes apart at two police stations outside the capital Algiers.
2009: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is confronted repeatedly by Pakistanis as she ends a tense three-day tour of the country.

2010: Yemeni police arrest a woman on suspicion of mailing a pair of bombs powerful enough to take down aeroplanes, reportedly targeted at the US.
2013: Israel announces plans to build more than 1500 homes in Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
2015: At least 22 asylum seekers, including 13 children, drown after two boats sink off the Greek islands of Kalymnos and Rhodes.
2017: Saudi Arabia announces it will allow women into sports stadiums as of next year, but they will be seated away from males in the so-called family section.
2018: Venice in Italy is flooded following heavy rain, winds and a high tide.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
“I’ve got a couple of very interesting projects … but what I don’t have anymore is time” — Juan Antonio Bardem, Spanish film director (1922-2002).