HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Monday, July 17, the 198th day of 2017. There are 167 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1968 – A revolution occurs in Iraq when Abdul Rahman Arif is overthrown and the Ba’ath Party is installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President. 1973 – King Mohammed Zahir Shah of Afghanistan is deposed by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan while in Italy undergoing eye surgery. 1975 – Apollo–Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations. 1976 – East Timor is annexed, and becomes the 27th
province of Indonesia. 1976 – The opening of the Summer Olympics in Montreal is marred by 25 African teams boycotting the New Zealand team. 1989 – First flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber. 1996 – TWA Flight 800: Off the coast of Long Island, New York, a Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 explodes, killing all 230 on board. 1998 – The 7.0 Mw Papua New Guinea earthquake triggers a tsunami that destroys ten villages in Papua New Guinea, killing up to 2,700 people, and leaving several thousand injured. 1998 – A diplomatic conference adopts the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, establishing a permanent international court to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. 2001 – Concorde is brought back in to service nearly a year
after the July 2000 crash. 2006 – The 7.7 Mw Pangandaran tsunami earthquake severely affects the Indonesian island of Java, killing 668 people, and leaving more than 9,000 injured. 2009 – Two suicide bombers detonate themselves at two
separate hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia. 2014 – Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777, crashes near the border of Ukraine and Russia after being shot down. All 298 people on board are killed. 2014 – A French regional train on the Pau-Bayonne line crashes into a high-speed train near the town of Denguin, resulting in at least 25 injuries. 2015 – At least 120 people are killed and 130 injured by a
suicide bombing in Diyala Province, Iraq.