In Egypt: Armed Forces Day.
2002: The French oil tanker Limburg is bombed by terrorists in the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Yemen. One crew member is killed, 12 are injured. The supertanker, leased by the Malaysian state oil company Petronas, was carrying 397,000 barrels of crude oil from the Kharg Island terminal in Iran and was preparing to take on 1.5 million more barrels of Yemeni crude at an offshore terminal near the Red Sea port of Mina al-Dabah, The New York Times reported. The London-based Arab newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that it had received a communiqué from the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army, a Yemeni fundamentalist group, claiming responsibility. Two members of al-Qaeda, Fawaz Yahya al-Rabeei and Mohamed Daylami, are eventually sentenced to death for the bombing. They escaped a Yemeni prison in October 2006 and were killed by security forces.
1981: Egypt's President, Anwar Sadat, is assassinated while reviewing a military parade commemorating the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, by Islamist militants. Sadat was born on Dec. 25, 1918.
- Profile: Anwar el Sadat
- The Assassination of Anwar el Sadat
- Ronald Reagan on the Assassination of Sadat
- Egypt: Country Profile
1977: Israeli football player Shimon Gershon, a member of the Israeli national team, is born in Israel.
1973: The Yum Kippur War, as it's known in Israel, or the Ramadan War, as it's known in the Arab world, began on Oct. 6, when Egypt's Third Army launched a surprise attack on Israeli forces in the Sinai. Syria and Iraq joined the battle on Egypt's side, sending modest contingents. Syria's forces focused on attacking Israel in the Golan Heights, which Israel took from Syria in 1967. The Yom Kippur war lasted until Oct. 25, by which time Israel, with the help of an American airlift of weapons, had pushed back and encircled the Third Army. Read more about the Yum Kippu War and its aftermath as it set up the Egyptian-Israeli peace accords that followed:
- On the Yom Kippur War
- History and analysis of the Egyptian-Israeli Disengagement Treaties of 1974 and 1975.
- Text of the Egyptian-Israeli Disengagement Treaty of 1974.
- Review: The Much Too Promised Land, by Aaron David Miller.
1952: Turkish writer and poet Ayten Mutlu is born in Bandirma, the northwestern port city on the Sea of Marmara.
1906: The Majlis of Iran, or Iranian parliament, convenes for the first time.