HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Friday, July 7, the 188th day of 2017. There are 177 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1937 – The Marco Polo Bridge Incident provides the Imperial Japanese Army with a pretext for starting the Second Sino-Japanese War. 1944 – World War II: Largest Banzai charge of the Pacific War
at the Battle of Saipan. 1947 – The Roswell incident, the (supposed) crash of an alien
spaceship near Roswell in New Mexico. 1953 – Ernesto “Che” Guevara sets out on a trip through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador. 1958 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Alaska
Statehood Act into law. 1959 – Venus occults the star Regulus. This rare event is used to determine the diameter of Venus and the structure of the Venusian atmosphere. 1963 – Buddhist crisis: The police of Ngô Ðình Nhu, brother and chief political adviser of President Ngô Ðình Diem, attacked a group of American journalists who were covering a protest. 1980 – During the Lebanese Civil War, 83 Tiger militants are killed during what will be known as the Safra massacre. 1985 – Boris Becker becomes the youngest player ever to
win Wimbledon at age 17 1991 – Yugoslav Wars: The Brioni Agreement ends the tenday independence war in Slovenia against the rest of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 1997 – The Turkish Armed Forces withdraw from northern Iraq after assisting the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War. 2003 – NASA Opportunity rover, MER-B or Mars Exploration Rover–B, was launched into space aboard a Delta II rocket. 2005 – A series of four explosions occurs on London’s transport system, killing 56 people, including four suicide bombers, and injuring over 700 others. 2007 – The first Live Earth benefit concert was held in 11
locations around the world. 2012 – At least 172 people are killed in a flash flood in the
Krasnodar Krai region of Russia. 2016 – Former U.S. Army soldier Micah Xavier Johnson shoots fourteen policemen during an anti-police protest in downtown Dallas, Texas, killing five of them. He is subsequently killed by a robot-delivered bomb.