HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Saturday, November 18, the 322nd day of 2017. There are 43 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1943 – World War II: Battle of Berlin: Four hundred forty Royal Air Force planes bomb Berlin causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF loses nine aircraft and 53 air crew. 1961 – United States President John F. Kennedy sends
18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam. 1963 – The first push-button telephone goes into service. 1978 – In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple to a mass murder–suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier. 1987 – King’s Cross fire: In London, 31 people die in a fire at the city’s busiest underground station, King’s Cross St Pancras. 1988 – War on Drugs: US President Ronald Reagan signs a bill into law allowing the death penalty for drug traffickers. 1991 – Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon release Anglican
Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland. 1991 – After an 87-day siege, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates to the besieging Yugoslav People’s Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces. 1993 – In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is approved by the House of Representatives. 1993 – In South Africa, 21 political parties approve a new constitution, expanding voting rights and ending white minority rule. 1996 – A fire occurs on a train traveling through the Channel Tunnel from France to England causing several injuries and damaging approximately 500 metres (1,600 ft) of tunnel. 2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: United Nations weapons
inspectors led by Hans Blix arrive in Iraq. 2003 – In the United Kingdom, the Local Government Act 2003, repealing controversial anti-gay amendment Section 28, becomes effective. 2003 – The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules 4–3 in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and gives the state legislature 180 days to change the law making Massachusetts the first state in the United States to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples.