This Day in History: Saddam Hussein was hanged for crimes against humanity

Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 30:

1916 – Grigory Rasputin, the Siberian peasant, mystic, and favourite of Russian Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra, was shot, poisoned and eventually drowned.

1947 – King Michael of Romania resigns.

1968 – Trygve Lie, Norwegian statesman and first secretary-general of the United Nations (1946-52), died.

1993 – Israel and the Vatican recognised each other.

2002 – Mwai Kibaki was sworn in as president of Kenya after sweeping to election victory with his National Rainbow Coalition, ending 24 years of rule by Daniel Arap Moi.

2003 – Former Khmer Rouge president Khieu Samphan, one of Pol Pot’s associates, admitted that mass murders were committed during Khmer Rouge rule in the 1970s.

2004 – A blaze in a Buenos Aires nightclub packed with young revellers celebrating the New Year killed 194 people in Argentina’s worst civil disaster in decades.

2006 – Saddam Hussein was hanged for crimes against humanity, a violent end for a leader who ruled Iraq by fear for three decades before being toppled by a U.S. invasion in 2003.

2006 – Explosion at Madrid’s Barajas airport.

2009 – Suicide bomber kills CIA agents in Khost, Afghanistan.

2013 – Dozens killed in attacks by anti-government forces in Kinshasa, DRC.

(Reuters)