Person report

★18 Oct 1968
At the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, American Bob Beamon in the long jump, a mark that stood for 23 years.

★12 Nov 1970
The Oregon Highway Division unsuccessfully attempted to destroy a rotting beached sperm whale near Florence, Oregon, with explosives.

★06 Jul 1971
As a result of his visits to several Asian communist countries, Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania's leader gave a speech on a number of Neo-Stalinist and socialist realist ideals, which became known as the July Theses.

★02 Apr 1973
The LEXIS computer-assisted legal research service launched as a continuation of an experiment organized by the Ohio State Bar in 1967.

★24 Dec 1973
The United States Congress granted Washington, D.C. home rule, allowing the residents to elect their own mayor and city council.

★25 Jul 1976
In a classic example of pareidolia, the Viking 1 spacecraft took a photo of what appeared to be a face on Mars.

★23 Jul 1982
During the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie in Valencia, California, a helicopter crashed, killing three people and leading to new safety standards.

★23 Jun 1985
A bomb attributed to the Sikh separatist group Babbar Khalsa destroyed Air India Flight 182 above the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 329 on board.

★27 Feb 1988
The Armenian community of Sumgait in Azerbaijan was the target of a violent pogrom.

★25 Dec 1990
British computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee introduced WorldWideWeb, the world's first web browser and WYSIWYG HTML editor.

Historical data by Wikipedia Contributors CC BY-SA 3.0.