HISTORY AT A GLANCE

TODAY is Friday, March 31, the 90th day of 2017. There are 275 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1942 – World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas

Island, then a British possession. 1945 – World War II: A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world’s first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands. 1949 – The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada. 1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer

to the United States Census Bureau. 1957 – Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta are held. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government. 1959 – The 14th Dalai Lama, crosses the border into India and

is granted political asylum. 1964 – A coup d’état in Brazil establishes a military government, under the aegis of general Castelo Branco. 1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon. 1970 – Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere after 12

years in orbit. 1979 – The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands.

Malta declares its Freedom Day (Jum il-Helsien). 1985 – The first WrestleMania, the biggest wrestling event from the WWE (then the WWF), takes place in Madison Square Garden in New York. 1986 – Six metropolitan county councils are abolished in

England. 1990 – Approximately 200,000 protestors take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax. 1991 – Georgian independence referendum, 1991: Nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country’s independence from the Soviet Union. 1992 – The USS Missouri, the last active United States Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California. 1994 – The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the

first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull. 2004 – Iraq War in Anbar Province: In Fallujah, Iraq, four American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed after being ambushed.