HISTORY AT A GLANCE

TODAY is Wednesday, August 2, the 214th day of 2017. There are 151 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1939 – Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon.

1943 – Jewish prisoners stage a revolt at Treblinka, one of the deadliest of Nazi death camps where approximately 900,000 persons were murdered in less than 18 months.

1943 – World War II: The Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 is rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri and sinks. Lt. John F. Kennedy, future U.S. President, saves all but two of his crew.

1944 – ASNOM: Birth of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, celebrated as Day of the Republic in the Republic of Macedonia.

1944 – World War II: The largest trade convoy of the world wars arrives safely in the Western Approaches.

1945 – World War II: End of the Potsdam Conference.

1947 – A British South American Airways Avro Lancastrian airliner crashes into a mountain during a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Santiago, Chile. The wreckage would not be found until 1998. 1964 – Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin incident: North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly fire on the U.S. destroyer USS Maddox.

1968 – An earthquake hits Casiguran, Aurora, Philippines killing more than 270 people and wounding 261.

1973 – A flash fire kills 51 at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man.

1980 – A bomb explodes at the railway station in Bologna,

Italy, killing 85 people and wounding more than 200.

1985 – Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport killing 137.

1989 – Pakistan is re-admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations after having restored democracy for the first time since

1972. 1989 – A massacre is carried out by an Indian Peace Keeping

Force in Sri Lanka killing 64 ethnic Tamil civilians.

1990 – Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf

War. 1998 – The Second Congo War begins. 2005 – Air France Flight 358, lands at Toronto Pearson International Airport, and runs off the runway causing the plane to burst into flames leaving 12 injuries and no fatalities. 2014 – At least 146 people were killed and more than 114

injured in an explosion at a factory near Shanghai.