For those who are interested......(like me)
Honduras has a long and interesting history..
Honduras
A chronology of key events:
1502 - Christopher Columbus lands in Honduras.
1525 - Spain begins conquest of Honduras, which is accomplished
only in 1539 after bitter struggles with the native population
and rivals representing Spanish power centres in Mexico, Panama
and Hispaniola.
17th century - Northern coast falls to British buccaneers;
British protectorate established over the coast until 1860
while the Spanish concentrate on the inland area.
1821 - Honduras gains independence from Spain but becomes part
of Mexico.
1823 - Honduras joins the United Provinces of Central America,
which also include Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and
Nicaragua.
1840 - Honduras becomes fully independent.
Late 19th-early 20th century - US becomes economically involved
in Honduras, with the United Fruit Company controlling two-
thirds of banana exports by 1913.
1932-49 - Honduras under right-wing National Party of Honduras
(PNH) dictatorship led by General Tiburcio Carias Andino.
1963 - Colonel Osvaldo Lopez Arellano takes power after leading
a coup.
1969 - Brief but costly war with El Salvador over heavy
immigration and disputed border.
1974- Lopez resigns after allegedly accepting a bribe from a US
company.
1975 - Colonel Juan Alberto Melgar Castro take power.
1978 - Melgar ousted in coup led by General Policarpo Paz
Garcia.
1980 - General Paz signs peace treaty with El Salvador.
1981 - Roberto Suazo Cordova of the centrist Liberal Party of
Honduras (PLH) is elected president, leading the first civilian
government in more than a century.
But armed forces chief General Gustavo Alvarez retains
considerable power and Honduras becomes embroiled in various
regional conflicts. US-run camps for training Salvadorans in
counterinsurgency are set up on Honduran territory.
1982 - US-backed Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries, or
Contras, launch operations to bring down Nicaragua's Sandinista
government from Honduran territory.
1982-83 - General Alvarez responds to increasing political
unrest by ordering the detention of trade union activists and
left-wing sympathisers. Death squads are allegedly used to
eliminate subversive elements.
1984 - General Alvarez is deposed amid anti-American
demonstrations in Tegucigalpa. US-run training camps for
Salvadoran counter-revolutionaries are shut down, but the
government continues to cooperate with the US administration's
anti-Sandinista activities in return for substantial economic
aid.
1986 - Another Liberal Party man, Jose Azcona del Hoyo, elected
president after the law was changed to stipulate a maximum one
-term presidency.
1987 - Amnesty granted both to military and left-wing
guerrillas for abuses committed during early 1980s.
1988 February - An Amnesty International report alleges an
increase in human rights violations by armed forces and right-
wing death squads.
2002: Honduras's child killings
2003: Honduras acts over child killings
1988 August - Inter-American Court of Human Rights finds
Honduran government guilty of "disappearances" of Honduran
citizens between 1981 and 1984.
1989 January - General Alvarez is assassinated by left-wing
guerrillas in Tegucigalpa.
1989 February - Summit of Central American presidents in El
Salvador reaches agreement on demobilisation of Nicaraguan
Contras based in Honduras.
1990 January - Rafael Callejas sworn in as president; proceeds
to introduce neo-liberal economic reforms and austerity
measures.
1990 June - Last Nicaraguan Contras leave Honduras.
1992 - International Court of Justice gives ruling establishing
new boundaries between Honduras and El Salvador.
1993 March - Government sets up commission to investigate
alleged human rights violations by military.
1993 November - Liberal Party candidate and veteran rights
activist Carlos Reina elected president. Reina pledges to
reform judicial system and limit power of armed forces.
1995 April - Compulsory military service abolished.
1995 July - First military officers charged with human rights
abuses.
1997 - Carlos Flores of the Liberal Party elected president;
pledges to restructure armed forces.
1998 May - Control of police transferred from military to
civilian authorities, but reports of rights abuses continue.
1998 October - Hurricane Mitch devastates Honduras.
1999 - Armed forces placed under civilian control.
1999 November - Congress ratifies 1986 maritime agreement with
Colombia settling claims over the Caribbean Sea. This upsets
Nicaragua, which claims some of the area as its own.
1999 December - Honduras and Nicaragua agree to halt ground
troop deployments and pull out naval forces from the Caribbean
sea pending resolution of a border dispute.
2000 June - Supreme Court rules that atrocities committed
during 1980s are not covered by amnesty of 1987.
2001 January - Honduran Committee for the Defence of Human
Rights says more than 1,000 street children were murdered in
2000 by death squads backed by the police.
2001 August - UN calls on government to prevent extrajudicial
killings of hundreds of children and teenagers, some at the
hands of police officers.
2002 January - Ricardo Maduro inaugurated as president. He says
armed forces will play greater role in fighting crime.
Declaration is greeted with dismay at home and abroad.
2002 January - Honduras re-establishes diplomatic ties with
Cuba which it severed in 1961 when Cuba was expelled from
Organisation of American States.
2003 May - Congress votes to send troops to Iraq, making
Honduras the first Central American country to authorise a
deployment.
2003 December - Honduras - along with Guatemala, El Salvador
and Nicaragua - agrees on a free trade agreement with the US.
2004 May - Prison fire at San Pedro Sula kills more than 100
inmates, many of them gang members.
2004 December - Suspected gang members massacre 28 bus
passengers in the northern city of Chamalecon.
2005 November - Tropical Storm Gamma kills more than 30 people
and forces tens of thousands from their homes.
2005 December - Liberal Party's Manuel Zelaya is declared the
winner of presidential elections after his ruling party rival
concedes defeat.
2006 April - Free trade deal with the US comes into effect. The
Honduran Congress approved the Central American Free Trade
Agreement (Cafta) in March 2005.
Honduras and neighbouring El Salvador inaugurate their newly-
defined border. The countries fought over the disputed frontier
in 1969.
2007 May - President Zelaya orders all the country's radio and
TV stations to carry government propaganda for two hours a day
for 10 days to counteract what he says is a campaign of
misinformation.
2007 October - The International Court of Justice in the Hague
settles a long-running territorial dispute between Honduras and
Nicaragua.
President Manuel Zelaya visits Cuba, the first official trip by
a Honduran president to the island in 46 years. The two
countries recently agreed their maritime boundaries after a
long-running dispute.
2008 August - Longtime US ally Honduras joins the Bolivarian
Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an alliance of leftist
leaders in Latin America headed by Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez, a staunch US foe. President Manuel Zelaya says a lack
of international support to tackle chronic poverty forced him
to seek aid from Venezuela.
2009 June - President Manuel Zelaya is removed by the military
and forced into exile. Coup is widely condemned. Organisation
of American States (OAS) suspends Honduras.
2009 September - Mr Zelaya makes a surprise return to Honduras,
taking refuge in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa.
2009 November - Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo Sosa of the conservative
National Party wins presidential election.
2009 December - Congress rejects proposal that Mr Zelaya be
allowed to return to office.
2010 January - Mr Zelaya goes into exile in the Dominican
Republic.
2010 January - Supreme Court dismisses charges against six
military commanders who expelled Mr Zelaya from the country in
June 2009.
2010 February - Government says it has restored diplomatic ties
with 29 countries following its isolation after the coup.
2010 March - US resumes aid programme suspended after the coup, saying President Porfirio Lobo was democratically elected.
2010 May - "Truth commission" begins investigating 2009 coup.
It was set up by President Porfirio Lobo to try restore the
country's international standing.
2010 November - International Criminal Court investigates
allegations of human rights abuses during the 2009 coup.
2010 December - Mexico, Honduras agree to work together to
prevent attacks on illegal migrants from Honduras, many of whom
are kidnapped on their way to the US.
UPDATED INFO for 2011, 2012 and now 2013 coming soon - email me for up to the minute news
