HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Saturday, October 7, the 280th day of 2017. There are 85 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1940 – World War II: The McCollum memo proposes bringing the United States into the war in Europe by provoking the Japanese to attack the United States. 1950 – Mother Teresa build an order called Missionary of
Charity 1955 – American poet Allen Ginsberg performs his poem Howl for the first time at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. 1958 – President of Pakistan Iskander Mirza, with the support of General Ayub Khan and the army, suspends the 1956 constitution, imposes martial law, and cancels the elections scheduled for January 1959. 1958 – The US manned space-flight project is renamed
Project Mercury. 1959 – USSR probe Luna 3 transmits the first ever
photographs of the far side of the Moon. 1963 – John F. Kennedy signs the ratification of the Partial
Test Ban Treaty. 1976 – Hua Guofeng becomes Mao Zedong’s successor as chairman of Communist Party of China, following the latter’s death barely a month earlier. 1977 – The adoption of the Fourth Soviet Constitution. 1985 – The Achille Lauro is hijacked by Palestine Liberation
Front. 1985 – The Mameyes landslide kills close to 300 in the worst
landslide in North American history. 1987 – Sikh nationalists declares the independence of Khalistan from India; it is not internationally recognized. 1988 – An Inupiaq hunter discovers three gray whales trapped under the ice in Barrow, Alaska, US; the situation becomes a multinational effort to free the whales. 1991 – Croatian War of Independence: Bombing of Banski
dvori in Zagreb kills one civilian. 1993 – The flood of ‘93 ends at St. Louis, Missouri, 103 days after it began, as the Mississippi River falls below flood stage. 1998 – Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, is found tied to a fence after being savagely beaten by two young adults in Laramie, Wyoming. 2001 – The US invasion of Afghanistan begins with an air
assault and covert operations on the ground. 2003 – The governor of California, Gray Davis, is recalled in
favour of Arnold Schwarzenegger.