HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Tuesday, March 7, the 66th day of 2017. There are 299 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1912 – Roald Amundsen announces that his expedition had
reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911. 1914 – Prince William of Wied arrives in Albania to begin his
reign as King. 1936 – Prelude to World War II: In violation of the Locarno Pact and the Treaty of Versailles, Germany reoccupies the Rhineland. 1945 – World War II: American troops seize the Ludendorff
Bridge over the Rhine river at Remagen. 1950 – Cold War: The Soviet Union issues a statement
denying that Klaus Fuchs served as a Soviet spy. 1951 – Korean War: Operation Ripper – United Nations troops led by General Matthew Ridgway begin an assault against Chinese forces. 1965 – Bloody Sunday: a group of 600 civil rights marchers is brutally attacked by state and local police in Selma, Alabama. 1968 – Vietnam War: The United States and South Vietnamese military begin Operation Truong Cong Dinh to root out Viet Cong forces from the area surrounding M? Tho. 1985 – The song “We Are the World” receives its
international release. 1986 – Challenger Disaster: Divers from the USS Preserver locate the crew cabin of Challenger on the ocean floor. 1987 – Lieyu Massacre: Taiwanese military massacre of 19 unarmed Vietnamese refugees at Donggang, Lieyu, Kinmen. 1989 – Iran and the United Kingdom break diplomatic relations after a row over Salman Rushdie and his controversial novel, The Satanic Verses. 2006 – The terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba coordinates
a series of bombings in Varanasi, India. 2007 – The British House of Commons votes to make the
upper chamber, the House of Lords, 100% elected. 2009 – The Real Irish Republican Army kills two British soldiers and two civilians at Massereene Barracks, the first British military deaths in Northern Ireland since the end of The Troubles. 2009 – The Kepler space observatory, designed to discover
Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, is launched. 2014 – The opening ceremony for the 2014 Winter
Paralympics take place in Sochi, Russia.