HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Saturday, April 15, the 105th day of 2017. There are 260 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1912 – The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg. Only 710 of 2,227 passengers and crew on board survive. 1923 – Insulin becomes generally available for use by people
with diabetes. 1936 – First day of the Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine. 1940 – The Allies begin their attack on the Norwegian town of
Narvik which is occupied by Nazi Germany. 1947 – Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers,
breaking baseball’s color line. 1955 – McDonald’s restaurant dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois 1960 – At Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ella Baker leads a conference that results in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the principal organizations of the Africanamerican Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. 1969 – The EC-121 shootdown incident: North Korea shoots down a United States Navy aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board. 1970 – During the Cambodian Civil War, massacres of the Vietnamese minority results in 800 bodies flowing down the Mekong river into South Vietnam. 1983 – Tokyo Disneyland opens to the public. 1984 – The inaugural World Youth Day is held in St. Peter’s
Square, Vatican City. 1986 – The United States launches Operation El Dorado Canyon, its bombing raids against Libyan targets in response to a bombing in West Germany that killed two US servicemen. 1989 – Hillsborough disaster: A human crush occurs at Hillsborough Stadium, home of Sheffield Wednesday, in the FA Cup Semi-final, resulting in the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans. 1989 – Upon Hu Yaobang’s death, the Tiananmen Square
protests of 1989 begin in China. 1994 – Conclusion of the Uruguay Round (eight round) of
GATT, officially establishing WTO. 2013 – Two bombs explode near the finish line at the Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts, killing three people and injuring 264 others. 2014 – More than 200 female students are declared missing
after a mass kidnapping in Borno State, Nigeria.