HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Wednesday, October 4, the 277th day of 2017. There are 88 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1940 – Meeting between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini at
the Brenner Pass. 1943 – World War II: US captures the Solomon Islands from
the Japanese. 1957 – Space Race: Launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial
satellite to orbit the Earth. 1958 – Fifth Republic of France is established. 1960 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 375, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, crashes after a bird strike on takeoff from Boston’s Logan International Airport, killing 62 of 72 on board. 1965 – Pope Paul VI arrives in New York, the first Pope to visit the United States of America and the Western hemisphere. 1967 – Omar Ali Saifuddien III of Brunei abdicates in favour of
his son, His Majesty Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. 1983 – Richard Noble sets a new land speed record of 633.468 miles per hour (1,019.468 km/h), driving Thrust2 at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. 1991 – The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the
Antarctic Treaty is opened for signature. 1992 – The Rome General Peace Accords ends a 16 year civil
war in Mozambique. 1992 – El Al Flight 1862: an El Al Boeing 747-258F crashes into two apartment buildings in Amsterdam, killing 43 including 39 on the ground. 1993 – Russian Constitutional Crisis: In Moscow, tanks bombard the White House, a government building that housed the Russian parliament, while demonstrators against President Boris Yeltsin rally outside. 2001 – NATO confirms invocation of Article 5 of the North
Atlantic Treaty. 2001 – Siberia Airlines Flight 1812: a Sibir Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 crashes into the Black Sea after being struck by an errant Ukrainian S-200 missile. Seventy-eight people are killed. 2003 – Maxim restaurant suicide bombing in Haifa, Israel: Twenty-one Israelis, Jews and Arabs, are killed, and 51 others wounded. 2004 – SpaceShipOne wins Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight, by being the first private craft to fly into space. 2010 – The Ajka plant accident in western Hungary releases about a million cubic metres (35 million cubic feet) of liquid alumina sludge. Nine people are killed and 122 injured, and the Marcal and Danube rivers are severely contaminated.