1994 CLEAN SLATE

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1947-2008-India-Roundup

CELEBRATED ABROAD

Kiran Bedi, India’s first woman ips officer and a former all-Asian tennis champion won the Magsaysay Award for her efforts in rehabilitating criminals in Tihar Jail. But that didn’t prevent her being shunted from one insignificant posting to another.

FIRST CUT

On October 15, the pslv (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) made a successful launch. It became a work-horse launch vehicle for isro, and since then has put eight Indian remote sensing satellites and six satellites for foreign customers in orbit.

REWIND

The ancient scourge of bubonic plague laid its deathly grip on Surat in Gujarat and Beed in Maharashtra in September and October. The panic was wide-spread—within four days of the outbreak, over four lakh people, or 12 per cent of the city’s population, field the city carrying with them the disease. A case of the plague was reported from Bangalore within a day of the outbreak in Surat. Modern medicine kept the death toll to 54, but only just, considering 1,500 people was infected within the first week itself.

“What is the Essence of Being a Woman?”

That was the final question. Sushmita Sens’s answer. “A gift of God we must all appreciate”, clinched the Miss Universe crown for her on May 21, while Aishwarya Rai followed it by winning the Miss World pageant later in the year.

20,000 Kashmiri militants were said to have been trained in 105 terrorist camps, both private and isi-sponsored, between 1991 and 1994.

“THIS IS MY FINEST HOUR.” Kapil Dev

That’s what Kapil Dev said in 2002 when he was crowned Wisden’s Indian Cricketer of the Century. Its roots lay in 1994. More than a decade after that unforgettable World Cup day on the Lords’ balcony, Kapil basked in that king-of-the-world feeling again when he took his 432^nd Test wicket, against Sri Lanka in Ahmedabad on February 8 to become Test cricket’s most prolific wicket-taker. Then in March, he became the first to take 250 wickets in one-day internationals. Kapil retired that year, playing his last Test in Hamilton, New Zealand, in March and his last one-day against the West Indies in Faridabad later that year.

ELSEWHERE…

• Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira died when a missile shot down their jet near Kigali, Rwanda.
• Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna (above) died in an accident during San Marino Grand Prix. Another racer, Roland Ratzenberger, was killed on the previous day at the previous day at the same track during qualifying.
• Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first Black president. The anti-apartheid activist had spent 27 years in prison.

DID YOU KNOW

On December 30, India ratified the pact that brought the World Trade Organization into existence, ushering in an era of reforms in tarrifs, subsidies and intellectual property rights.

Courtesy By India Today