HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Wednesday, September 13, the 256th day of 2017. There are 109 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1942 – World War II: Second day of the Battle of Edson’s Ridge in the Guadalcanal Campaign. US Marines successfully defeated attacks by the Imperial Japanese Army with heavy losses for the Japanese forces. 1948 – Deputy Primer Minister of India Vallabhbhai Patel ordered the Army to move into the Hyderabad to integrate it with Indian Union. 1953 – Nikita Khrushchev is appointed General Secretary of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1956 – The dike around the Dutch polder East Flevoland is
closed. 1956 – The IBM 305 RAMAC is introduced, the first
commercial computer to use disk storage. 1964 – South Vietnamese Generals Lâm Van Phát and Duong Van Ðuc fail in a coup attempt against General Nguyen Khánh. 1968 – Albania leaves the Warsaw Pact. 1971 – People’s Republic of China: Chairman Mao Zedong’s second in command and successor Marshal Lin Biao flees the country via plane after the failure of alleged coup against Mao. The plane crashes in Mongolia, killing all aboard. 1988 – Hurricane Gilbert is the strongest recorded hurricane in the Western Hemisphere, later replaced by Hurricane Wilma in 2005 (based on barometric pressure). 1989 – Largest anti-Apartheid march in South Africa, led by
Desmond Tutu. 1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shakes hands with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House after signing the Oslo Accords granting limited Palestinian autonomy. 1994 – Ulysses probe passes the Sun’s south pole. 2001 – Civilian aircraft traffic resumes in the United States
after the September 11 attacks. 2007 – The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
is adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. 2008 – Delhi, India, is hit by a series of bomb blasts, resulting
in 30 deaths and 130 injuries. 2008 – Hurricane Ike makes landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast of the United States, causing heavy damage to Galveston Island, Houston and surrounding areas. 2013 – Taliban insurgents attack the United States consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, with two members of the Afghan National Police reported dead and about 20 civilians injured.