In Kuwait
1960 — Kuwait among the five founders of OPEC
The Baghdad conference closed with the founding of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, after meetings that ran from 10 to 14 September at Qaat Al-Shaab. Kuwait was represented among the five founding fathers by Ahmad Al-Sayed Omar, alongside Fuad Rouhani for Iran, Talaat Al-Shaibani for Iraq, Abdullah Al-Tariki for Saudi Arabia and Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo for Venezuela. Kuwait has been a member ever since.
1970 — The birth of Mai Al-Baloushi
The Kuwaiti actress Mai Al-Baloushi was born. She began in 2001 with the series Dumu Sharie, worked with her sisters Maram and Hind Al-Baloushi, and acted alongside her daughters Souad and Shaima. She presented the programme Girgian in successive parts from 2003, and her work includes Al-Hareem, Zahf Al-Aqarib and Baqaya Lail. The birth date rests on a single source.
2014 — The first senior Kuwaiti visit to Ramallah since 1967
The deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, arrived in Ramallah by helicopter, the first visit by a senior Kuwaiti official to the Palestinian territories since 1967. He was received by the presidency’s secretary general, Al-Tayeb Abdulrahim, and met President Mahmoud Abbas and foreign minister Riyad Al-Maliki. The two sides signed an agreement and a memorandum of understanding.
2024 — The death of Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah
The former prime minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah died at about eighty-two. Born in 1942, he began his public career at the Amiri Diwan in 1968, was appointed governor of Hawalli in the 1970s and governor of Ahmadi in 1985. He took the social affairs portfolio in 1986 and then information until the Iraqi invasion, returned after liberation as deputy prime minister and defence minister in 2001, and was appointed prime minister in 2011, forming seven successive cabinets until 2019.
2024 — Asian bronze for the junior handball team
Kuwait’s junior handball team beat Saudi Arabia 30–26 in the third-place match at the tenth Asian junior championship in Jordan. Youssef Madouh was named player of the match. All four sides — Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Korea — booked places at the junior world cup in Cairo in 2025.
2025 — The National Centre for Education Development is abolished
The official gazette Kuwait Al-Youm published decree 180 of 2025, repealing decree 308 of 2006 which had established the National Centre for Education Development. Article two transferred the centre’s staff to the Ministry of Education on their existing salaries, grades, allowances and bonuses, moved the centre’s powers and obligations to the ministry, and brought the decree into force from the date of publication.
In the world
1982 — Bachir Gemayel is assassinated before taking office
The Lebanese president-elect Bachir Gemayel was killed in an explosion that struck the Kataeb party headquarters in Ashrafieh, Beirut, along with a number of his companions. He had been elected president on 23 August 1982, some twenty-two days before his death, and had not yet taken office. Born on 10 November 1947, he died at thirty-four.
2015 — The first direct detection of gravitational waves
At 09:51 GMT the two LIGO observatories picked up a gravitational-wave signal from the merger of two black holes, the first direct detection of waves that general relativity had predicted a full century earlier. The signal was named GW150914 after its date, and the discovery was formally announced on 11 February 2016 after months of checking.
2019 — Attacks halt half of Aramco’s output
Saudi Arabia announced that the Aramco plants at Abqaiq and Khurais had been attacked between 3.31 and 3.42 in the morning, causing fires that were brought under control. The energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, said the attacks temporarily halted about 5.7 million barrels a day of crude production, roughly half the company’s output, along with seven hundred thousand barrels a day of natural gas liquids. There were no injuries among staff.
Kuwait One, once a week.
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