TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 2017
On this day in history:
1492 - Christopher Columbus left Palos, Spain with three ships. The voyage led him to what is now known as the Americas. He reached the Bahamas on October 12.
1914 - Germany declared war on France. The next day the First World War began when Britain declared war on Germany. 1923 - Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the 30th president of the US after the sudden death of President Harding. 1936 - Jesse Owens won the first of his four Olympic gold medals.
1936 - A fire wipes out Kursha-2 in the Meshchera Lowlands, Ryazan Oblast, Russia, killing 1,200 and leaving only 20 survivors.
1958 - The Nautilus became the first vessel to cross the North Pole underwater. The mission was known as “Operation Sunshine.”
1989 - Hashemi Rafsanjani was sworn in as the president of Iran.
1990 - The highest temperature ever known in Britain is recorded in Leicestershire... at 37 degrees C.
1990 - Thousands of Iraqi troops pushed within a few miles of the border of Saudi Arabia. This heightened world concerns that the invasion of Kuwait could spread.
1992 - The US Senate voted to restrict and eventually end the testing of nuclear weapons. 1992 - Russia and Ukraine agreed to put the Black Sea Fleet under joint command. The agreement was to last for three years.
1995 - Eyad Ismoil was flown from Jordan to the US to face charges that he had driven the van that blew up in New York’s World Trade Center.
2004 - In New York, the Statue of Liberty re-opened to the public. The site had been closed since the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. 2009 - Bolivia became the first South American country to declare the right of indigenous people to govern themselves. 2010 - Widespread rioting erupts in Karachi, Pakistan, after the assassination of a local politician, leaving at least 85 dead and at least 17 billion Pakistani rupees (US$200 million) in damage.
2014 - A 6.1 magnitude earthquake kills at least 617 people and injures more than 2,400 in Yunnan, China.