HISTORY AT A GLANCE

TODAY is Tuesday, February 16, the 47th day of 2016. There are 319 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1923 – Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh

Tutankhamun. 1930 – The Romanian Football Federation joins FIFA. 1934 – The Austrian Civil War ends with the defeat of the Social Democrats and the Republikanischer Schutzbund. 1936 – Elections bring the Popular Front to power in Spain. 1937 – Wallace H. Carothers receives a United States patent

for nylon. 1940 – World War II: Altmark Incident: The German tanker Altmark is boarded by sailors from the British destroyer HMS Cossack. 299 British prisoners are freed. 1943 – World War II: Red Army troops re-enter Kharkov. 1943 – World War II: Insertion of Operation Gunnerside,

Norway. 1945 – World War II: American forces land on Corregidor

Island in the Philippines. 1957 – The “Toddlers’ Truce”, a controversial television close down between 6.00 pm and 7.00 pm is abolished in the United Kingdom. 1959 – Fidel Castro becomes Premier of Cuba after dictator

Fulgencio Batista was overthrown on January 1. 1960 – The US Navy submarine USS Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe. 1961 – Explorer program: Explorer 9 (S-56a) is launched. 1978 – The first computer bulletin board system is created

(CBBS in Chicago). 1983 – The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria and South

Australia kill 75. 1985 – Hezbollah is founded. 1986 – The Soviet liner MS Mikhail Lermontov runs aground

in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand. 1987 – The trial of John Demjanjuk, accused of being a Nazi guard dubbed “Ivan the Terrible” in Treblinka extermination camp, starts in Jerusalem. 1991 – Nicaraguan Contras leader Enrique Bermúdez is

assassinated in Managua. 1998 – China Airlines Flight 676 crashes into a road and residential area near Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taiwan, killing all 196 aboard and seven more on the ground. 1999 – In Uzbekistan, a bomb explodes and gunfire is heard at the government headquarters in an apparent assassination attempt against President Islom Karimov. 1999 – Across Europe, Kurdish rebels take over embassies and hold hostages after Turkey arrests one of their rebel leaders, Abdullah Öcalan. 2005 – The Kyoto Protocol comes into force, following its

ratification by Russia. 2013 – A bomb blast at a market in Hazara Town in Quetta, Pakistan kills more than 80 people and injures 190 others.