HISTORY AT A GLANCE

TODAY is Saturday, May 27, the 147th day of 2017. There are 218 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1965 – Vietnam War: American warships begin the first bombardment of National Liberation Front targets within South Vietnam. 1967 – Australians vote in favour of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census. 1967 – The US Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is launched by Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter Caroline. 1968 – The meeting of the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France (National Union of the Students of France) takes place. 30,000 to 50,000 people gather in the Stade Sébastien Charléty. 1971 – The Dahlerau train disaster, the worst railway accident in West Germany, kills 46 people and injures 25 near Wuppertal. 1975 – Dibbles Bridge coach crash near Grassington, in North Yorkshire, England, kills 33 – the highest ever death toll in a road accident in the United Kingdom. 1980 – The Gwangju Massacre: Airborne and army troops of South Korea retake the city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207 and possibly many more. 1995 – In Culpeper, Virginia, the actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition. The 7.0 Mw Neftegorsk earthquake shakes northern Sakhalin Island in Russia with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), leaving 1,989 people dead and 750 injured. 1996 – First Chechen War: the Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets with Chechnyan rebels for the first time and negotiates a cease-fire. 1997 – The US Supreme Court rules that Paula Jones can pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he is in office. 1998 – Oklahoma City bombing: Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the terrorist plot. 2001 – Members of the Islamist separatist group Abu Sayyaf seize twenty hostages from an affluent island resort on Palawan in the Philippines; the hostage crisis would not be resolved until June 2002. 2006 – The 6.4 Mw Yogyakarta earthquake shakes central Java with an MSK intensity of IX (Destructive), leaving more than 5,700 dead and 37,000 injured.