HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Tuesday, April 18, the 108th day of 2017. There are 257 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1942 – World War II: The Doolittle Raid on Japan. Tokyo,
Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya are bombed. 1942 – Pierre Laval becomes Prime Minister of Vichy France.
1943 – World War II: Operation Vengeance, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is killed when his aircraft is shot down by US fighters over Bougainville Island. 1945 – Over 1,000 bombers attack the small island of
Heligoland, Germany. 1946 – The International Court of Justice holds its inaugural
meeting in The Hague, Netherlands. 1954 – Gamal Abdel Nasser seizes power in Egypt. 1955 – Twenty-nine nations meet at Bandung, Indonesia, for
the first Asian-African Conference. 1958 – A United States federal court rules that poet Ezra
Pound be released from an insane asylum. 1961 – The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, a cornerstone of modern international relations, is adopted. 1961 – CONCP is founded in Casablanca as a united front of
African movements opposing Portuguese colonial rule. 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. 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. 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.