history at a glance

TODAY is Sunday April 18 the 108th day of the year. There are 257 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1906 – An earthquake and fire destroy much of San Francisco, California.

1942 – World War II: The Doolittle Raid on Japan. Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya are bombed. 1954 – Gamal Abdel Nasser seizes power in Egypt.

1955 – Albert Einstein, German-born scientist and mathematician, died. He formulated the theory of

relativity and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.

1955 – Twenty-nine nations meet at Bandung, Indonesia, for the first Asian-African Conference.

1980 – The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) comes into being, with Canaan Banana as the country’s first President. The Zimbabwean dollar replaces the Rhodesian dollar as the official currency. 1981 – The longest professional baseball game is begun in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The game is suspended at 4:00 the next morning and finally completed on June 23.

1983 – A suicide bomber destroys the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people. 1988 – The United States launches Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest

naval battle since World War II.

1992 – General Abdul Rashid Dostum revolts against President Mohammad Najibullah of the Democratic

Republic of Afghanistan and allies with Ahmad Shah Massoud to capture Kabul.

1996 – In Lebanon, at least 106 civilians are killed when the Israel Defense Forces shell the United Nations

compound at Quana where more than 800 civilians had taken refuge.

2002 – Former king Mohammed Zahir Shah returned home to the Afghan capital Kabul after 29 years in

exile.

2007 – A series of bombings, two of them being suicides, occur in Baghdad, killing 198 and injuring 251. 2013 – A suicide bombing in a Baghdad cafe kills 27 people and injures another 65.

2014 – Sixteen people are killed in an avalanche on Mount Everest.