HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Monday, June 19, the 170th day of 2017. There are 195 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1944 – World War II: First day of the Battle of the Philippine
Sea. 1961 – Kuwait declares independence from the United
Kingdom. 1966 – Shiv Sena a political party in India is founded in
Mumbai. 1970 – The Patent Cooperation Treaty is signed. 1978 – Garfield, holder of the Guinness World Record for the world’s most widely syndicated comic strip, makes its debut. 1982 – In one of the first militant attacks by Hezbollah, David S. Dodge, president of the American University of Beirut, is kidnapped. 1985 – Members of the Revolutionary Party of Central American Workers, dressed as Salvadoran soldiers, attack the Zona Rosa area of San Salvador. 1987 – Basque separatist group ETA commits one of its most violent attacks, in which a bomb is set off in a supermarket, Hipercor, killing 21 and injuring 45. 1990 – The current international law defending indigenous peoples, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989, is ratified for the first time by Norway. 1991 – The Soviet occupation of Hungary ends. 2007 – The al-Khilani Mosque bombing in Baghdad leaves 78
people dead and another 218 injured. 2009 – Mass riots involving over 10,000 people and 10,000 police officers break out in Shishou, China, over the dubious circumstances surrounding the death of a local chef. 2009 – War in North-West Pakistan: The Pakistani Armed Forces open Operation Rah-e-Nijat against the Taliban and other Islamist rebels in the South Waziristan area of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. 2010 – The Wedding of Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, and Daniel Westling was held at Storkyrkan in Stockholm. 2012 – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange requested asylum in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy for fear of extradition to the US after publication of previously classified documents including footage of civilian killings by the US army. 2014 – Felipe VI, Prince of Asturias, rises to the Spanish throne following the abdication of his father, Juan Carlos I.