This Day in History: Two planes collided in mid-air over New York City killing 136

Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 16:

1921 – Camille Saint-Saens, French composer, died. Among his best-known works are his Symphony No 3 and the opera “Samson and Delilah”.

1960 – A United Airlines DC-8 and a TWA Super Constellation collided in mid-air over New York City; 128 people aboard the planes and eight on the ground were killed.

1965 – W. Somerset Maugham, English writer, died. Best known for his novels “Of Human Bondage” and “The Moon and Sixpence”.

1995 – Israel’s army pulled out of Qalqilya, the fourth of six West Bank towns being transferred to Palestinian self-rule by the end of that year under a peace deal.

1996 – A South Korean appeals court commuted the death sentence on ex-President Chun Doo Hwan to life imprisonment.

2000 – President-elect George W. Bush named retired General Colin Powell as his secretary of state, the first African-American to hold a top U.S. diplomatic post.

2002 – Former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic, once dubbed Bosnia’s “Iron Lady”, dramatically confessed to crimes against humanity at the start of a landmark hearing at The Hague to determine her sentence. She was the only woman publicly indicted in the tribunal’s nine-year history.

2011 – Jyoti Amge certified as the world’s shortest woman on her 18th birthday in the central Indian city of Nagpur.

2013 – Bus falls off an elevated expressway in Manila, killing at least 21 people.

2014 – Taliban gunmen attack Army Public School in Peshawar, Pakistan taking hundreds of students and teachers hostage.

(Reuters)