history at a glance

TODAY is Sunday May 28 the 148th day of the year. There are 217 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1937 – The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., who pushes a button signalling the start of vehicle traffic over the span. 1937 – Volkswagen (VW), the German automobile manufacturer is founded. 1940 – World War II: Belgium surrenders to Nazi Germany to end the Battle of Belgium. 1940 – World War II: Norwegian, French, Polish and British forces recapture Narvik in Norway.

This is the first allied infantry victory of the War. 1942 – World War II: In retaliation for the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich, Nazis

in Czechoslovakia kill over 1,800 people. 1948 – Daniel François Malan is elected as Prime Minister of South Africa. He later goes on to

implement Apartheid. 1952 – The women of Greece are granted the right to vote. 1958 – Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement, heavily reinforced by Frank

Pais Militia, overwhelm an army post in El Uvero. 1961 – Peter Benenson’s article The Forgotten Prisoners is published in several internationally read newspapers. This will later be thought of as the founding of the human rights organization Amnesty International. 1964 – The Palestine Liberation Organization is formed. 1974 – Northern Ireland’s power-sharing Sunningdale Agreement collapses following a

general strike by loyalists. 1975 – Fifteen West African countries sign the Treaty of Lagos, creating the Economic

Community of West African States. 1979 – Konstantinos Karamanlis signs the full treaty of the accession of Greece with the

European Economic Community. 1987 – West German pilot Mathias Rust, who was 18 years old, evades Soviet Union air defences and lands a private plane in the Red Square in Moscow, Russia. He is immediately detained and would not be released until August 3, 1988. 1991 – The capital city of Addis Ababa falls to the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary

Democratic Front, ending both the Derg regime in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Civil War. 1995 – The Russian town of Neftegorsk is hit by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that kills at least

2,000 people, half of the total population. 1998 – Nuclear testing: Pakistan responds to a series of nuclear tests by India with five of its own codenamed Chagai-I, prompting the United States, Japan, and other nations to impose economic sanctions. Pakistan celebrates Youm-e-Takbir annually. 1999 – In Milan, Italy, after 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece

The Last Supper is put back on display. 2002 – The last steel girder is removed from the original World Trade Center site. Cleanup duties officially end with closing ceremonies at Ground Zero in Manhattan, New York City. 2002 – NATO declares Russia a limited partner in the Western alliance. 2002 – The Mars Odyssey finds signs of large ice deposits on the planet Mars. 2004 – The Iraqi Governing Council chooses Ayad Allawi, a longtime anti-Saddam Hussein

exile, as prime minister of Iraq’s interim government. 2008 – The first meeting of the Constituent Assembly of Nepal formally declares Nepal a

republic, ending the 240-year reign of the Shah dynasty. 2010 – In West Bengal, India, a train derailment and subsequent collision kills 141

passengers.