HISTORY AT A GLANCE

TODAY is Thursday, May 25, the 145th day of 2017. There are 220 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1961 – Apollo program: US President John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of the Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a “man on the Moon” before the end of the decade. 1961 – The Bukit Ho Swee Fire, the biggest fire in Singapore

history. 1963 – In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Organisation of African

Unity is established. 1967 – Celtic F.C. from Glasgow, Scotland, becomes the first ever Northern European team to win the European Cup; with previous winners being from Spain, Italy and Portugal. 1977 – Star Wars is released in theaters. 1977 – Chinese government removes a decade old ban on William Shakespeare’s work, effectively ending the Cultural Revolution started in 1966. 1981 – In Riyadh, the Gulf Cooperation Council is created between Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. 1982 – HMS Coventry is sunk during the Falklands War. 1985 – Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm

surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people. 1997 – A military coup in Sierra Leone replaces President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah with Major Johnny Paul Koromah. 2000 – Liberation Day of Lebanon. Israel withdraws its army from most of the Lebanese territory after 22 years of its first invasion in 1978. 2001 – Erik Weihenmayer, 32 years old, of Boulder, Colorado, becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. 2002 – China Airlines Flight 611 disintegrates in mid-air and crashes into the Taiwan Strait. All 225 people on board are killed. 2008 – NASA’s Phoenix lander lands in Green Valley region of Mars to search for environments suitable for water and microbial life. 2012 – The Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to successfully rendezvous with the International Space Station. 2013 – Suspected Maoist rebels kill at least 28 people and injure 32 others in an attack on a convoy of Indian National Congress politicians in Chhattisgarh, India.