TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2018 On this day in history:

1788 - Isaac Briggs and William Longstreet patented the steamboat.

1793 - France declared war on Britain and Holland.

1858 - The first balloon flight in Australia occurs.

1884 - The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published.

1896 - Puccini’s opera La Boheme premiered in Turin. 1915 - Opal is first discovered in Coober Pedy, Australia.

1918 - Russia adopts the Gregorian calendar, centuries after the western world. 1946 - Norwegian statesman Trygve Lie was chosen to be the first secretary-general of the United Nations.

1958 - The United Arab Republic was formed by a union of Egypt and Syria. It was broken 1961.

1968 - During the Vietnam War, South Vietnamese National Police Chief Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head. The scene was captured in a news photograph.

1979 - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was welcomed in Tehran as he ended nearly 15 years of exile.

2001 - Three Scottish judges found Abdel Basset al-Mergrahi guilty of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people. The court said that Megrahi was a member of the Libyan intelligence service. Al-Amin Khalifa, who had been co-accused, was acquitted and freed.

2003 - NASA’s space shuttle Columbia exploded while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. All seven astronauts on board were killed.

2004 - Hajj pilgrimage stampede: In a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, 251 people are trampled to death and 244 injured. 2005 - King Gyanendra of Nepal carries out a coup d’état to capture the democracy, becoming Chairman of the Councils of ministers.

2012 - At least 72 people are killed and over 500 injured as a result of clashes between fans of Egyptian football teams Al-Masry and Al-Ahly in the city of Port Said.

2013 - The Shard, the tallest building in the European Union, is opened to the public.