HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Tuesday, August 11, the 223th day of 2015. There are 142 day left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1918 – World War I: The Battle of Amiens ends. 1919 – The constitution of the Weimar Republic is adopted. 1920 – The Latvian–Soviet Peace Treaty, which relinquished Russia’s authority and pretenses to Latvia, is signed, ending the Latvian War of Independence. 1929 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio. 1934 – The first civilian prisoners arrive at the Federal prison
on Alcatraz Island. 1942 – Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi. 1945 – Poles in Kraków engage in a pogrom against Jews in
the city, killing one and wounding five. 1947 – Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founding father of Pakistan, gives a speech to the Constituent Assembly, the contents and meaning of which remain contentious today. 1952 – Hussein bin Talal is proclaimed King of Jordan. 1959 – Sheremetyevo International Airport, the secondlargest airport in Russia, opens. 1960 – Chad declares independence. 1961 – The former Portuguese territories in India of Dadra and Nagar Haveli are merged to create the Union Territory Dadra and Nagar Haveli. 1962 – Vostok 3 launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev becomes the first person to float in microgravity. 1965 – Race riots (the Watts Riots) begin in the Watts area
of Los Angeles, California. 1968 – The last steam hauled train runs on British Rail 1972 – Vietnam War: The last United States ground combat
unit leaves South Vietnam. 1975 – East Timor: Governor Mário Lemos Pires of Portuguese Timor abandons the capital Dili, following a coup by the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) and the outbreak of civil war between UDT and Fretilin. 1979 – Two Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134s collide over the Ukrainian city of Dniprodzerzhynsk and crash, killing all 178 aboard both airliners. 1982 – A bomb explodes on Pan Am Flight 830, en route from Tokyo, Japan to Honolulu, Hawaii, killing one teenager and injuring 15 passengers. 1984 – “We begin bombing in five minutes” – United States President Ronald Reagan, while running for reelection, jokes while preparing to make his weekly Saturday address on National Public Radio. 1999 – The Salt Lake City Tornado tears through the
downtown district of the city, killing one. 2003 – NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year-history. 2003 – Jemaah Islamiyah leader Riduan Isamuddin, better
known as Hambali, is arrested in Bangkok, Thailand. 2006 – The oil tanker M/T Solar 1 sinks off the coast of Guimaras and Negros Islands in the Philippines, causing the country’s worst oil spill. 2012 – At least 306 people are killed and 3,000 others
injured in a pair of earthquakes near Tabriz, Iran.