A file photo shows British playwright Harold Pinter talking to journalists outside his home after he won the Nobel prize for literature in London October 13, 2005. Pinter, the British playwright and Nobel laureate famous for his brooding portrayals of domestic life and barbed politics, has died aged 78. (REUTERS File Photo)
Following are some of the major events to have occurred on Dec 24
Reuters
1942 - An assassin killed Admiral Francois Darlan, a senior figure in France's collaborationist Vichy government.
1989 - Deposed Panamanian strongman General Manuel Antonio Noriega turned himself in to the papal envoy and asked for political asylum.
1994 - Fundamentalist Muslim guerrillas hijacked a French airliner at Algiers airport, killing two people.
1995 - An Islamic party, Welfare, won a general election for the first time in Turkey's 72-year secular history.
1997 - A Paris court jailed guerrilla mastermind Carlos "The Jackal" for life for killing two French secret agents.
1999 - Maurice Couve de Murville, longest-serving French foreign minister who later became prime minister, died at 92.
1999 - Ivory Coast's army overthrew elected President Henri Konan Bedie in a coup.
2000 - Mini-Cooper creator John Cooper dies.
2001 - Israel barred Palestinian President Yasser Arafat from making his annual Christmas visit to Bethlehem, insisting he crack down on Palestinian militants.
2003 - The Italian food giant Parmalat, embroiled in one of Europe's biggest corporate scandals, filed for bankruptcy protection after the discovery of a 7 billion euro hole in its accounts.
2008 - Harold Pinter, the British playwright and Nobel laureate famous for his brooding portrayals of domestic life and barbed politics, died aged 78.
