HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Wednesday June 11, the 162nd day of 2014. There are 203 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1963 – American Civil Rights Movement: Alabama Governor George Wallace stands at the door of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama in an attempt to block two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending that school. Later in the day, accompanied by federalised National Guard troops, they are able to register. 1963 – Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc burns himself with petrol in a busy Saigon intersection to protest the lack of religious freedom in South Vietnam. 1963 – John F. Kennedy addresses Americans from the Oval Office proposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that would revolutionist American society. Proposing equal access to public facilities, end segregation in education and guarantee federal protection for voting rights. 1964 – World War II veteran Walter Seifert runs amok in an elementary school in Cologne, Germany, killing at least eight children and two teachers and seriously injuring several more with a home-made flamethrower and a lance. 1970 – After being appointed on May 15, Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington officially receive their ranks as US Army Generals, becoming the first females to do so. 1971 – The US Government forcibly removes the last holdouts to the Native American Occupation of Alcatraz, ending 19 months of control. 1972 – The Eltham Well Hall rail crash, caused by an
intoxicated train driver, kills six people and injures 126. 1978 – Altaf Hussain founds the students’ political movement All Pakistan Muhajir Students Organisation (APMSO) in Karachi University. 1981 – A Richter Scale 6.9 magnitude earthquake at Golbaf,
Iran, kills at least 2,000. 1998 – Compaq Computer pays $9 billion for Digital Equipment Corporation in the largest high-tech acquisition. 2001 – Timothy McVeigh is executed for his role in the
Oklahoma City bombing. 2002 – Antonio Meucci is acknowledged as the first inventor
of the telephone by the United States Congress. 2004 – Cassini-Huygens makes its closest flyby of the Saturn
moon Phoebe. 2008 – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes a historic official apology to Canada’s First Nations in regard to a residential school abuse in which children are isolated from their homes, families and cultures for a century. 2012 – Two earthquakes struck northern Afghanistan, causing a large landslide, which buried the town of Sayi Hazara, trapping 71 people. After four days of digging, only five bodies were recovered and the search was called off.