Today in History: Slavery Convention signed by 20 states at League of Nations

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on September 25:

1926 – Slavery Convention signed by 20 states at League of Nations.

1932 – The Spanish region of Catalonia was granted autonomy.

1943 – The Russians liberated Smolensk, one of the most important bastions still left to the Germans in Russia, during World War Two.

1957 – U.S. National Guardsmen escorted nine black students into Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas in an attempt at desegregation.

1983 – Leopold III, king of Belgium 1934-51, died. He became a national embarrassment and was forced to abdicate in 1951 because of his alleged collaboration with Nazi Germany.

1997 – The British Thrust SuperSonic car set a new land speed record in Nevada of 714.1 mph (1,149.2 kph).

2001 – Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, leaving Pakistan as the last state still recognising the Taliban government.

2002 – Indian commandos stormed the Akshardham Temple in western Gujarat, ending a siege and killing two gunmen who had massacred 28 people and wounded more than 70 the night before.

2003 Edward Said, Palestinian intellectual, died. A comparative literature professor at Columbia, he was also a literary critic and theoretician and a prominent Palestinian activist.

2003 – Franco Modigliani, who fled his native Italy under fascism and won a Nobel prize in economics in 1985, died. He was 85.

2003 – French actress Clotilde Courau marries Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, grandson of Italy’s last king.

(Reuters)