HISTORY AT A GLANCE

TODAY is Saturday, September 30, the 273rd day of 2017. There are 92 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1949 – The Berlin Airlift ends.

1954 – The US Navy submarine USS Nautilus is commissioned as the world’s first nuclear reactor powered vessel.

1955 – Film star James Dean dies in a road accident aged 24.

1962 – James Meredith enters the University of Mississippi,

defying segregation.

1965 – The 30 September Movement attempts a coup against the Indonesian government, which is crushed by the military under Suharto and leads to a mass anticommunist purge, with over 500,000 people killed.

1968 – The Boeing 747 is rolled out and shown to the public

for the first time at the Boeing Everett Factory.

1970 – Jordan makes a deal with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) for the release of the remaining hostages from the Dawson’s Field hijackings. 1975 – The Hughes (later McDonnell Douglas, now Boeing)

AH-64 Apache makes its first flight.

1977 – Because of US budget cuts and dwindling power reserves, the Apollo program’s ALSEP experiment packages left on the Moon are shut down.

1979 – The Hong Kong MTR commences service with the opening of its Modified Initial System (aka. Kwun Tong Line).

1980 – Ethernet specifications are published by Xerox working

with Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation.

1986 – Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed details of Israel’s covert nuclear program to British media, is kidnapped in Rome, Italy by the Israeli Mossad.

1993 – An earthquake hits India’s Latur and Osmanabad district of Marathwada (Aurangabad division) in Maharashtra state leaving tens of thousands of people dead and many more homeless.

1999 – Japan’s second-worst nuclear accident at a uranium reprocessing facility in Tokai-mura, northeast of Tokyo.

2004 – The first images of a live giant squid in its natural

habitat are taken 600 miles south of Tokyo.

2004 – The AIM-54 Phoenix, the primary missile for the F-14 Tomcat, is retired from service. Almost two years later, the Tomcat is retired.

2005 – The controversial drawings of Muhammad are printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

2009 – The 2009 Sumatra earthquakes occur, killing over 1,115 people.