HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Monday, September 25, the 268th day of 2017. There are 97 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: The Chinese Eighth Route Army gains a minor, but morale-boosting victory in the Battle of Pingxingguan. 1944 – World War II: Surviving elements of the British 1st Airborne Division withdraw from Arnhem in the Netherlands, thus ending the Battle of Arnhem and Operation Market Garden. 1956 – TAT-1, the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable
system, is inaugurated. 1959 – Solomon Bandaranaike, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka is mortally wounded by a Buddhist monk, Talduwe Somarama, and dies the next day. 1962 – The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria is formally proclaimed. Ferhat Abbas is elected President of the provisional government. 1962 – The North Yemen Civil War begins when Abdullah asSallal dethrones the newly crowned Imam al-Badr and declares Yemen a republic under his presidency. 1964 – The Mozambican War of Independence against
Portugal begins. 1969 – The charter establishing the Organisation of Islamic
Cooperation is signed. 1972 – In a referendum, the people of Norway reject
membership of the European Community. 1974 – The first ulnar collateral ligament replacement surgery (Tommy John surgery) performed, on baseball player Tommy John. 1977 – About 4,200 people take part in the first running of the
Chicago Marathon. 1981 – Belize joins the United Nations. 1983 – Maze Prison escape: 38 republican prisoners, armed with six handguns, hijack a prison meals lorry and smash their way out of the Maze prison. It is the largest prison escape since WWII and in British history. 1992 – NASA launches the Mars Observer, a $511 million probe to Mars, in the first U.S. mission to the planet in 17 years. Eleven months later, the probe would fail. 2003 – A magnitude-8.0 earthquake strikes just offshore
Hokkaido, Japan. 2008 – China launches the spacecraft Shenzhou 7. 2009 – US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in a joint TV appearance for a G-20 summit, accused Iran of building a secret nuclear enrichment facility.