HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Tuesday, February 14, the 45th day of 2017. There are 320 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1950 – Chinese Civil War: The National Revolutionary Army instigates the unsuccessful Battle of Tianquan against the People’s Liberation Army. 1956 – The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union begins in Moscow. On the last night of the meeting, Premier Nikita Khrushchev condemns Joseph Stalin’s crimes in a secret speech. 1961 – Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at the University of California. 1979 – In Kabul, Setami Milli militants kidnap the American ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs who is later killed during a gunfight between his kidnappers and police. 1981 – Stardust fire: A fire in a Dublin nightclub kills 48 people 1989 – Union Carbide agrees to pay $470 million to the Indian government for damages it caused in the 1984 Bhopal disaster. 1989 – Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini issues a fatwa encouraging Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. 1990 – Ninety-two people are killed when Indian Airlines Flight
605 crashes in Bangalore, India. 1990 – The Voyager 1 spacecraft takes the photograph of
planet Earth later become famous as Pale Blue Dot. 2000 – The spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker enters orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid. 2005 – Lebanese self-made billionaire and business tycoon Rafic Hariri is killed, along with 21 others, when explosives, equivalent of around 1,000 kg of TNT, are detonated as his motorcade drove near the St. George Hotel in Beirut. 2005 – Seven people are killed and 151 wounded in a series of bombings by suspected al-Qaeda-linked militants that hit the Philippines’ Makati financial district in Metro Manila, Davao City, and General Santos City. 2005 – YouTube is launched by a group of college students, eventually becoming the largest video sharing website in the world and a main source for viral videos. 2011 – As a part of Arab Spring, the Bahraini uprising, a series of demonstrations, amounting to a sustained campaign of civil resistance, in the Persian Gulf country of Bahrain begins with a ‘Day of Rage’.