HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Saturday, March 4, the 63th day of 2017. There are 302 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1960 – The French freighter La Coubre explodes in Havana, Cuba
killing 100. 1962 – A Caledonian Airways Douglas DC-7 crashes shortly after takeoff from Cameroon, killing 111 – the worst crash of a DC-7. 1966 – A Canadian Pacific Air Lines DC-8-43 explodes on landing at Tokyo International Airport, killing 64 people. 1970 – French submarine Eurydice explodes underwater,
resulting in the loss of the entire 57-man crew. 1974 – People magazine is published for the first time in the
United States as People Weekly. 1976 – The Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention is formally dissolved in Northern Ireland resulting in direct rule of Northern Ireland from London by the British parliament. 1977 – The 1977 Vrancea earthquake in eastern and southern Europe kills more than 1,500, mostly in the seriously damaged city of Bucharest, Romania. 1980 – Nationalist leader Robert Mugabe wins a sweeping election victory to become Zimbabwe’s first black prime minister. 1986 – The Soviet Vega 1 begins returning images of Halley’s
Comet and the first images of its nucleus. 1991 – Sheikh Saad Al-Salim Al-Sabah, the Prime Minister of Kuwait, returns to his country for the first time since Iraq’s invasion. 2001 – BBC bombing: A massive car bomb explodes in front of the BBC Television Centre in London, seriously injuring one person. The attack was attributed to the Real IRA. 2001 – Hintze Ribeiro disaster: A bridge collapses in northern
Portugal, killing up to 70 people. 2002 – Afghanistan: Seven American Special Operations Forces soldiers and 200 Al-Qaeda Fighters are killed as American forces attempt to infiltrate the Shah-iKot Valley on a low-flying helicopter reconnaissance mission. 2009 – The International Criminal Court (ICC) issues an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan alBashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Al-Bashir is the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the ICC since its establishment in 2002. 2013 – A plane crash in Democratic Republic of the Congo
kills 6 people. 2015 – At least 34 miners die in a suspected gas explosion at the Zasyadko coal mine in rebel-held Donetsk region of Ukraine.