In 1984 an Indian Airlines plane was hijacked in Chandigarh, India, and landed at Dubai Airport, where the authorities negotiated a successful end to the situation.
In 1998, Rama the cama was born at the Camel Reproduction Centre in Dubai. The world’s first cross-breed between a female llama and a male camel broke new scientific barriers.
During the 1990s, UN sanctions on Saddam’s Iraq gave rise to a lot of illegal smuggling, often by ill-equipped amateurs. This poorly prepared barge, Al Tazya-1, sank off the coast of Abu Dhabi, causing a huge oil slick.
Dubai resident Dave McCarthy paddles his raft down a flooded street in urban Dubai after heavy rains submerged many residential areas in 2008.
This brave Emirati is opening the first Dubai Shopping Festival in 1996 with an inaugural bungee jump over Dubai Creek. He jumped off a 150-foot platform to plunge down and be stopped by the rubber rope attached to his ankles. Impressively, despite his obvious terror, he retains the presence of mind to hang onto his DSF bags.
A traditional seller displays his pile of tobacco leaves in Bur Dubai in the 1980s.
In 1985, the first Emirates flight took off from Dubai to Karachi. Emirates was incorporated on May 25 and started with two planes (an Airbus A300 and a Boeing 737-300) leased from Pakistan International Airways (PIA) before it took delivery of its own fleet of new planes.
In 1999, General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Defence Minister, tours the headquarters of the UAE forces peace keeping mission in Kosovo.
President Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan greets the members of the UAE’s Federal National Council, FNC, on his arrival in the chamber to open a session in August 1983. The FNC is the UAE’s consultative assembly with members from all seven emirates.
Dubai’s iconic seven-star hotel, Burj Al Arab, was built over four years and opened in 1999. Here one of the building’s six gigantic steel cross pieces is arriving, having been hauled on twin trailers from the manufacturing site in Jebel Ali to the construction site off Jumeirah beach.
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n December 1986 the relaunched Gulf News celebrated its first birthday. Guests included (from left) front row: Abdullah Hassan Al Rostamani, Shaikh Hasher Maktoum, Saeed Al Ghandi and Saeed Al Mulla. Back row: Brigader Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Abdul Rahman Al Ghurair, Abdullah Al Mulla, Obaid Humaid Al Tayer and Francis Matthew.
During the last half of 1990, tens of thousands of US troops passed through the UAE during the massive buildup of allied forces in preparation for the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in February 1991, in which UAE troops joined the international coalition.
An oil rig jacket in 1980 being towed out to sea from the McDermott yard in the Creek, which was where the modern day dhow wharfage is located, between the Maktoum Bridge and today’s Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry building. This picture also shows the far shore of the Creek with the undeveloped Shindagha in front of the busy Port Rashid; and in the foreground you can see dhows drawn up on the Deira beach of Al Ras, which has long since been developed into buildings and a road.
Shaikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Vice-President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, watching the first issue of Gulf News roll off the press in 1978, accompanied by members of the Abulhoul family, the then-owners, at their Airport Road printing press.
A very rare heavy snowfall in the UAE in 2009 left about 30cm in some parts of Ras Al Khaimah’s Jebel Al Jais. In places 1,900 metres above sea level, the temperatures fell to 2 degrees below zero.
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