HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Friday, August 4, the 216th day of 2017. There are 149 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1944 – The Holocaust: A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they find and arrest Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others.
1947 – The Supreme Court of Japan is established.
1958 – The Billboard Hot 100 is published for the first time.
1964 – Gulf of Tonkin incident: U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.
1965 – The Constitution of the Cook Islands comes into force, giving the Cook Islands self-governing status within New Zealand.
1969 – Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, American representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuân Thuy begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail.
1974 – A bomb explodes in the Italicus Express train at San Benedetto Val di Sambro, Italy, killing 12 people and wounding 22.
1975 – The Japanese Red Army takes more than 50 hostages at the AIA Building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hostages include the US consul and the Swedish Chargé d’affaires. The gunmen win the release of five imprisoned comrades and fly with them to Libya.
1977 – US President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.
1984 – The Republic of Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
1987 – The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues “fairly”.
1993 – A federal judge sentences Los Angeles Police Department officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King’s civil rights.
2002 – Soham murders: Ten-year-old school girls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells go missing from the town of Soham, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom.
2006 – A massacre is carried out by Sri Lankan government forces, killing 17 employees of the French INGO Action Against Hunger (known internationally as Action Contre la Faim, or ACF).
2007 – NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft is launched.