TODAY is Thursday, August 3, the 215th day of 2017. There are 150 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1936 – Jesse Owens wins the 100 meter dash, defeating
Ralph Metcalfe, at the Berlin Olympics. 1936 – A fire wipes out Kursha-2 in the Meshchera Lowlands, Ryazan Oblast, Russia, killing 1,200 and leaving only 20 survivors. 1940 – World War II: Italian forces begin the invasion of British
Somaliland. 1946 – Santa Claus Land, the world’s first themed amusement
park, opens in Santa Claus, Indiana, United States. 1948 – Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of being a
communist and a spy for the Soviet Union. 1949 – The Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League finalize the merger, that would create the National Basketball Association 1958 – The nuclear submarine USS Nautilus travels beneath
the Arctic ice cap. 1960 – Niger gains independence from France. 1961 – The New Democratic Party of Canada is founded by the merger of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Canadian Labour Congress. 1972 – The United States Senate ratifies the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty. 1975 – A privately chartered Boeing 707 strikes a mountain
peak and crashes near Agadir, Morocco, killing 188. 1977 – Tandy Corporation announces the TRS-80, one of the
world’s first mass-produced personal computers. 1981 – Senegalese opposition parties, under the leadership of Mamadou Dia, launch the Antiimperialist Action Front – Suxxali Reew Mi. 1997 – Oued El-Had and Mezouara massacre in Algeria; a total of 116 villagers killed, 40 in Oued El-Had and 76 in Mezouara. 2001 – The Real IRA detonates a car bomb in Ealing, London,
England, United Kingdom injuring seven people. 2005 – President of Mauritania Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya is overthrown in a military coup while attending the funeral of King Fahd in Saudi Arabia. 2005 – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad becomes President of Iran. 2007 – Former Deputy Director of the Chilean secret police Raúl Iturriaga is captured after having been on the run following a conviction for kidnapping. 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.