Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 6:
1917 – The steamship Mont Blanc, carrying benzol, picric acid and 5,000 tonnes of TNT, collided with the steamship Imo at Halifax, Canada. The resulting explosion killed more than 1,500 people, injured 8,000 and destroyed a large part of the city.
1973 – Gerald Ford was sworn in as U.S. vice president after the resignation of Spiro Agnew over allegations of financial irregularities.
1992 – Hindu extremists destroyed a historically important mosque at Ayodhya, India. More than 400 people died in the resulting sectarian violence.
1994 – Prince Rainier of Monaco leaves hospital after heart surgery.
1995 – A Russian Aeroflot Tupolev-154 with 97 people on board went missing; the wreckage was eventually found on Dec. 18 about 30 miles (50 km) inland from the Tatar Strait.
1999 – Georges Rutaganda, a leader of the Hutu militia group that led the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, was convicted of genocide by a U.N. tribunal and sentenced to life imprisonment.
2001 – Anti-Taliban forces captured the main base of Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora Mountains of eastern Afghanistan but failed to find the Saudi-born militant.
2003 – Miss Ireland, Rosanna Davison, was crowned Miss World 2003 in Communist China’s first international beauty pageant.
2005 – Luxembourg’s Charly Gaul, winner of the Tour de France in 1958 and one of cycling’s great names, died aged 72.
2005 – An Iranian military aircraft carrying dozens of journalists crashed into a Tehran apartment block and exploded, killing 116 people.
2006 – Joseph Kabila took office as Congo’s first democratically elected president in over four decades.
(Reuters)