HISTORY AT GLANCE
TODAY is Thursday, November 16, the 320th day of 2017. There are 45 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1907 – Cunard Line’s RMS Mauretania, sister ship of RMS Lusitania, sets sail on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England, to New York City. 1914 – The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States
officially opens. 1920 – Qantas, Australia’s national airline, is founded as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited. 1940 – Holocaust: In occupied Poland, the Nazis close off the
Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world. 1943 – World War II: American bombers strike a hydroelectric power facility and heavy water factory in German-controlled Vemork, Norway. 1944 – World War II: Operation Queen, the costly Allied thrust
to the Rur, is launched. 1945 – UNESCO is founded. 1965 – Venera program: The Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe toward Venus, which will be the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet. 1973 – Skylab program: NASA launches Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronauts from Cape Canaveral, Florida for an 84-day mission. 1973 – US President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline. 1974 – The Arecibo Message is broadcast from the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico. It was aimed at the current location of the globular star cluster Messier 13 some 25,000 light years away. The message will reach empty space by the time it finally arrives since the cluster will have changed position. 1979 – The first line of Bucharest Metro (Line M1) is opened from Timpuri Noi to Semana to area in Bucharest, Romania. 1988 – The Supreme Soviet of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic declares that Estonia is “sovereign” but stops short of declaring independence. 1988 – In the first open election in more than a decade, voters in Pakistan elect populist candidate Benazir Bhutto to be Prime Minister of Pakistan. 1989 – A death squad composed of El Salvadoran army troops kills six Jesuit priests and two others at Jose Simeon Canas University. 1997 – After nearly 18 years of incarceration, the People’s Republic of China releases Wei Jingsheng, a prodemocracy dissident, from jail for medical reasons.