1917: Third Battle of Ypres: Canadian troops recapture the high ground in the village of Passchendaele from the

1948: Earthquake in Ashgabat kills 100,000 in Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic

1948: Paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey finds the first partial fossil skull of Proconsul africanus, an ancestor of apes and humans, on Rusinga Island, Kenya

1949: US President Harry Truman signs the Mutual Defense Assistance Act to strengthen NATO allies especially Greece and Turkey

1951: Joseph Stalin announces that the Soviet Union has an atomic bomb

1956: Scientist Albert Sabin announces that his oral polio vaccine is ready for testing; it soon replaces Jonas Salk’s vaccine in many parts of the world

2021: WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recommends the world’s first malaria vaccine, Mosquirix, for children after a pilot program proves effective in Africa

Source: Onthisday.com