HISTORY At A Glance

TODAY is Saturday, April 17, the 107th day of 2021. There are 258 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion: A group of Cuban exiles financed and trained by the CIA lands at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.

1970 Apollo program: The ill-fated Apollo 13 spacecraft returns to Earth safely. 1971 The People’s Republic of Bangladesh forms, under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at Mujibnagor.

1973 George Lucas begins writing the

treatment for The Star Wars.

1975 The Cambodian Civil War ends. The Khmer Rouge captures the capital Phnom Penh and Cambodian government forces surrender.

1978 Mir Akbar Khyber is assassinated, provoking a communist coup d’état in Afghanistan.

1984 Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher is killed by gunfire from the Libyan People’s Bureau (Embassy) in London during a small demonstration outside the embassy. Ten others are

wounded. The events lead to an 11day siege of the building.

2006 A Palestinian suicide bomber detonates an explosive device in Tel Aviv, killing 11 people and injuring 70. 2013 An explosion at a fertilizer plant in the city of West, Texas, kills 15 people and injures 160 others.

2014 NASA’s Kepler confirms the discovery of the first Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of another star.