HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Tuesday, February 7, the 38th day of 2017. There are 327 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1935 – The classic board game Monopoly is invented. 1940 – The second full-length animated Walt Disney film, Pinocchio, premieres. 1943 – World War II: Imperial Japanese Navy forces complete the evacuation of Imperial Japanese Army troops from Guadalcanal during Operation Ke, ending Japanese attempts to retake the island from Allied forces in the Guadalcanal Campaign. 1944 – World War II: In Anzio, Italy, German forces launch a counteroffensive during the Allied Operation Shingle. 1951 – Korean War: 705 suspected communist sympathizers are butchered by South Korean forces. 1962 – The United States bans all Cuban imports and exports. 1964 – The Beatles first arrive in the United States. Their performance on The Ed Sullivan Show two days later would mark the beginning of the British Invasion. 1974 – Grenada gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1979 – Pluto moves inside Neptune’s orbit for the first time since either was discovered. 1984 – Space Shuttle program: STS-41-B Mission – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU). 1986 – Twenty-eight years of one-family rule end in Haiti, when President Jean-Claude Duvalier flees the Caribbean nation. 1990 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union: The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agrees to give up its monopoly on power. 1991 – Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is sworn in. 1992 – The Maastricht Treaty is signed, leading to the creation of the European Union. 1995 – Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan. 1997 – NeXT merges with Apple Computer, starting the path to Mac OS X. 1999 – Crown Prince Abdullah becomes the King of Jordan on the death of his father, King Hussein. 2009 – Bushfires in Victoria leaves 173 dead in the worst natural disaster in Australia’s history. 2014 – The opening ceremony for the 2014 Winter Olympics is held in the Russian city of Sochi.