This week in history

Tizane Navea-Rogers delves into The Independent's archive to see which world events made the front page of our paper.

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This week sees diplomatic fallout as the US guns down two Libyan MiGs, meanwhile five European peace monitors are killed in another shot-down aircraft, later acknowledged by the Yugoslav military. Years later, Washington comes under renewed scrutiny as American and British companies are accused of carving up Iraq's oil profits in the aftermath of war. In the heart of Paris, the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo marks one of the deadliest assaults on a media organisation in modern Europe. In 2021, signs of a fractious decade emerge with the storming of the United States Capitol, a stark example of political violence directed at a seat of government. All are charted on the front covers of The Independent.

5 January 1989 US jets gun down Libyan aircraft

US fighter jets shoot down two Libyan MiG aircraft over the Mediterranean in what the Pentagon describes as an act of selfdefence, amid heightened tensions between Washington and Tripoli. Colonel Gaddafi denounces the incident as American "aggression" and vows retaliation, deepening an already volatile stand-off in US-Libyan relations at the end of the Cold War.

9 January 1990 - New evidence in infamous Birmingham Six case

The Home Office receives new evidence in the case of the Birmingham Six, intensifying scrutiny of the convictions that jailed six men for the 1974 IRA pub bombings in Birmingham.