HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Thursday, March 2, the 61st day of 2017. There are 304 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1943 – World War II: Battle of the Bismarck Sea: United States and Australian forces sink Japanese convoy ships. 1946 – Ho Chi Minh is elected the President of North
Vietnam. 1955 – Norodom Sihanouk, king of Cambodia, abdicates the
throne in favor of his father, Norodom Suramarit. 1956 – Morocco gains its independence from France. 1962 – In Burma, the army led by General Ne Win seizes
power in a coup d’état. 1965 – The US and South Vietnamese Air Force begin Operation Rolling Thunder, a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam. 1969 – Soviet and Chinese forces clash at a border outpost
on the Ussuri River. 1970 – Rhodesia declares itself a republic, breaking its last links with the British crown.
1972 – The Pioneer 10 space probe is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida with a mission to explore the outer planets.
1977 – Libya becomes the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya as the General People’s Congress adopted the “Declaration of the Establishment of the People’s Authority”.
1983 – Compact discs and players are released for the first time in the United States and other markets. They had previously been available only in Japan.
1989 – Twelve European Community nations agree to ban the production of all chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the end of the century.
1990 – Nelson Mandela is elected deputy President of the
African National Congress. 1991 – Battle at Rumaila oil field brings an end to the 1991
Gulf War. 1992 – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, San Marino, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan join the United Nations.
1998 – Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Jupiter’s moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
2002 – US invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins, (ending on March 19 after killing 500 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, with 11 Western troop fatalities).
2004 – War in Iraq: Al-Qaeda carries out the Ashoura Massacre in Iraq, killing 170 and wounding over 500.