history at a glance
TODAY is Sunday December 3 the 337th day of the year. There are 28 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1944 – Greek Civil War: Fighting breaks out in Athens between the ELAS and government
forces supported by the British Army. 1959 – The current flag of Singapore is adopted, six months after Singapore became self-governing within the British Empire. 1967 – At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, a transplant team headed by Christiaan Barnard carries out the first heart transplant on a human (53-year-old Louis Washkansky). 1971 – Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: Pakistan launches a pre-emptive strike against India and
a full-scale war begins claiming hundreds of lives. 1973 – Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter. 1976 – An assassination attempt is made on Bob Marley. He is shot twice, and plays a concert
two days later. 1979 – In Cincinnati, 11 fans are suffocated in a crush for seats on the concourse outside
Riverfront Coliseum before a Who concert. 1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini becomes the first Supreme Leader of Iran. 1982 – A soil sample is taken from Times Beach, Missouri, that will be found to contain 300
times the safe level of dioxin. 1984 – Bhopal disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people outright and injures 150,000–600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history. 1989 – Cold War: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the Cold War between NATO and the Soviet Union may be coming to an end. 1990 – The 1990 Wayne County Airport runway collision kills seven passengers and one crew
member. 1992 – The Greek oil tanker Aegean Sea, carrying 80,000 tonnes of crude oil, runs aground in
a storm while approaching A Coruña, Spain, and spills much of its cargo. 1992 – A test engineer for Sema Group uses a personal computer to send the world’s first text
message via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague. 1994 – The PlayStation was released in Japan 1997 – In Ottawa, Canada, representatives from 121 countries sign the Ottawa Treaty prohibiting manufacture and deployment of anti-personnel landmines. The United States, People’s Republic of China, and Russia do not sign the treaty, however. 1999 – NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft
enters the Martian atmosphere. 1999 – Six firefighters are killed in the Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse fire in Worcester, Massachusetts. 2005 – XCOR Aerospace makes the first manned rocket aircraft delivery of U.S. Mail in Kern
County, California. 2009 – A suicide bombing at a hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, kills 25 people, including three
ministers of the Transitional Federal Government. 2012 – At least 475 people are killed after Typhoon Bopha makes landfall in the Philippines. 2012 – In Northern Ireland, 15 police officers are injured during rioting at Belfast City Hall
following a vote to change Belfast City Council’s policy on flying the union flag. 2014 – The Japanese space agency, JAXA, launches the space explorer Hayabusa 2 from the Tanegashima Space Center on a six-year round trip mission to a asteroid to collect rock samples.