After 17 years of British rule, and centuries in the Ottoman Empire before that, Iraq becomes an independent nation for the first time.

Britain had seized Iraq from Turkey (then part of the Ottoman Empire) during World War 1.

The League of Nation's had given Britain a mandate to govern the country in 1920.

Britain established a monarchy in the country in 1932.

It was to fall in a coup in 1958, and for the next twenty years there were a series of military and civilian governments.

General Saddam Hussein took power as a dictator in 1979.