Today in History: 181 coal miners were trapped underground in eastern China

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on August 18:

1932 – Scottish aviator Jim Mollison made the first transatlantic solo flight from east to west – from Portmarnock, Ireland, to Pennfield, Canada.

1999 – World’s first giant panda triplets are born.

2002 – Pope John Paul II, addressing some 2.7 million people, his largest crowd ever in Poland, warned that the new millennium was threatened by an onslaught of evil.

2003 – Ma Le Hua of China breaks world record for largest domino topple with 350,000 dominoes.

2004 – Greece’s two top athletes — Costas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou — pulled out of the Athens Olympics and apologised to the Greek people for a scandal over missed dope tests.

2007 – About 181 coal miners were trapped underground and feared dead in eastern China after a rain-swollen river burst a leeve and flooded two seperate shafts.

2008 – Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a former Maoist guerrilla chief, who led a decade-long insurgency against Nepal’s Hindu monarchy was sworn in as the Himalayan republic’s first prime minister.

2008 – Yelena Isinbayeva sets world record in women’s pole vault final at Olympic Games.

2008 – Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf announces his resignation.

2012 – Taiwanese farmers set world record for planting rice seedlings.

2017 – Fatal stabbings by Moroccan teen in Turku Market Square, Finland.

(Reuters)