Today in History: Ivory Coast proclaimed its independence from France

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on Aug. 7:

1933 - The Iraqi Government slaughters over 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Sumail. The day becomes known as Assyrian Martyrs Day.

1942 – The first U.S. land offensive of World War Two in the Pacific started in the Southern Solomon Islands, on Guadalcanal.

1947 – The raft Kon Tiki ran aground on the Tuamotu Archipelago in the Pacific, 101 days after leaving Peru. The expedition, led by the Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl, was intended to prove that pre-Incan South American Indians could have colonised Polynesian islands by drifting on ocean currents.

1957 – Oliver Hardy, partner of Stanley Laurel in one of the most famous of all screen comedy duos, died.

1960 – Ivory Coast proclaimed its independence from France.

1990 – Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress suspended a 29-year guerrilla campaign against white rule in a dramatic move that cleared the way for talks on ending South Africa’s apartheid system.

1998 – Car bombs exploded at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing at least 213 people in Nairobi and 11 in Dar es Salaam. More than 5,000 were wounded. Followers of Islamist militant Osama bin Laden were later convicted in New York.

2000 – Jean-Michel Rossi, a founder of Corsica’s main separatist guerrilla group, was assassinated with his associate Jean-Claude Fratacci in the town of L’Ile Rousse.

2002 – The International Monetary Fund threw a $30 billion cash lifeline to Brazil to shore up the economy — its biggest ever bailout.

2006 – BP Plc shut down its giant Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska owing to a damaged pipeline, prompting the U.S. government to consider releasing emergency stockpiles as prices jumped.

2007 – Raul Hilberg, who spent more than half a century researching the Holocaust and was best known for his massive study “The Destruction of the European Jews”, died.

2017 – Alberto Contador retires from cycling.

(Reuters)