HISTORY AT A GLANCE

TODAY is Wednesday, May 24, the 144th day of 2017. There are 221 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1941 – World War II: In the Battle of the Atlantic, the German Battleship Bismarck sinks then-pride of the Royal Navy, HMS Hood, killing all but three crewmen.

1960 – Following the 1960 Valdivia earthquake, the largest ever recorded earthquake, Cordón Caulle begins to erupt.

1961 – American civil rights movement: Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, for “disturbing the peace” after disembarking from their bus.

1962 – Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.

1963 – Baldwin–Kennedy meeting on race relations in the US

1967 – Egypt imposes a blockade and siege of the Red Sea coast of Israel.

1968 – FLQ separatists bomb the US consulate in Quebec City.

1976 – The London to Washington, D.C., Concorde service begins.

1982 – Liberation of Khorramshahr: Iranians recapture of the port city of Khorramshahr from the Iraqis during the Iran–Iraq War.

1988 – Section 28 of the United Kingdom’s Local Government Act 1988, a controversial amendment stating that a local authority cannot intentionally promote homosexuality, is enacted.

1993 – Eritrea gains its independence from Ethiopia.

1994 – Four men convicted of bombing the World Trade Center in New York in 1993 are each sentenced to 240 years in prison.

1999 – The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Miloševic and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.

2000 – Israeli troops withdraw from southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation.

2001 – Mountaineering: Temba Tsheri, a 16-year-old Sherpa, becomes the youngest person to climb to the top of Mount Everest.

2002 – Russia and the United States sign the Moscow Treaty.

2014 – At least 3 people are killed in a shooting at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels, Belgium