HOSTORY AT A GLANCE

TODAY is Saturday, June 17, the 168th day of 2017. There are 197 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1944 – Iceland declares independence from Denmark and

becomes a republic. 1953 – East Germany Workers Uprising: In East Germany, the Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion. 1958 – The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, in the process of being built to connect Vancouver and North Vancouver (Canada), collapses into the Burrard Inlet killing many of the ironworkers and injuring others. 1960 – The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres (28,000 km2) of land undervalued at four cents/ acre in the 1863 treaty. 1963 – A day after South Vietnamese President Ngô Ðình Diem announced the Joint Communiqué to end the Buddhist crisis, a riot involving around 2,000 people breaks out. One person is killed. 1967 – The People’s Republic of China announces a

successful test of its first thermonuclear weapon. 1972 – Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition. 1985 – STS-51-G Space Shuttle Discovery launches carrying Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as a Payload Specialist. 1987 – With the death of the last individual of the species, the

dusky seaside sparrow becomes extinct. 1991 – Apartheid: The South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth. 1992 – A “joint understanding” agreement on arms reduction is signed by U.S. President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (this would be later codified in START II). 1994 – Following a televised low-speed highway chase, O. J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. 2015 – Nine people are killed in a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.