Thorpe sets 800-metre world swim record
2001 - Australian Olympic champion Ian Thorpe claimed his 12th individual world record when he demolished the 800 metres freestyle mark at the Australian National Championships. He continued where he had left off at last year’s Sydney Olympics, setting a world record of seven minutes 41.59 seconds in his first major competition since the Games. Thorpe’s time shattered the previous record of 7:46.00 set by fellow Australian Kieren Perkins at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Canada, by almost four and a half seconds. It was his first world record over a long distance. Remarkably, Thorpe was making his first serious attempt at the 16-lap event and had to swim the final less than 20 minutes after his 200-metre semifinals.
March 26
1881 - Romania becomes a monarchy and King Carol I is proclaimed king.
1885 - The Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co, forerunner of Eastman Kodak, manufactures the first commercial motion picture film.
1913 - More than 1,400 perish in floods in the US states of Ohio, Indiana and Texas.
1953 - American Dr Jonas E. Salk unveils first polio vaccine.
1971 - Bangladesh declares its independence.
1979 - Egypt and Israel sign the Camp David peace treaty at the White House.
1987 - Tunisia breaks off diplomatic relations with Iran.
1991 - Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay sign Treaty of Asuncion, launching the Southern Cone Common Market.
1993 - United Nations Security Council votes to send 30,000 troops to Somalia, the largest and most expensive peacekeeping operation till date.
1997 - The bodies of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult who committed suicide are found in a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California.
2000 - Dubai Financial Market officially opens.
2001 - A boarding school fire in Kenya kills 58 boys and seriously injures 28 others.
2005 - A land mine explodes under a US vehicle in Kabul, killing four soldiers in the deadliest incident for American troops in Afghanistan.
2007 - More than $20 billion (Dh73.6 billion) deal is signed between India and UAE.
2008 - Kholoud Ahmad Jua’an Al Daheri becomes the UAE’s first woman judge.
2012 - Hollywood director James Cameron dives to the Earth’s deepest point in a specially designed submarine, making him the first man to travel alone to the depths of the Mariana Trench.
