On This Day in History

An explosion, likely caused by a World War II–era naval mine, capsized the Soviet ship Novorossiysk in the harbor of Sevastopol, with the loss of 608 men.

Israeli Border Police massacred 48 Arab citizens of Kafr Qasim, among them women and children who were returning from work.

Following the nationalisation of the Egypt's Suez Canal, Israel, France, and the United Kingdom invaded the Sinai Peninsula.

A C-46 airliner carrying the Cal Poly Mustangs football team crashed during takeoff from Toledo Express Airport in Ohio, U.S., resulting in 22 deaths.

Singaporean leftist opposition leader Chia Thye Poh was detained under the Internal Security Act, which allows for preventive detention, and held for 32 years.

British prime minister Margaret Thatcher officially opened the M25, one of Britain's busiest motorways.

Galileo became the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid when it made a flyby of 951 Gaspra.

At 77 years old, former astronaut John Glenn (pictured) returned to space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on the STS-95 mission.

About 10,000 people died when the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the North Indian Ocean made landfall in the Indian state of Odisha near Bhubaneswar.

Somali pirates hijacked a North Korean ship in the Indian Ocean northeast of Mogadishu.

Hurricane Sandy, the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, made landfall in New Jersey and caused nearly $75 billion in damages, becoming the second-most destructive storm in U.S. history.

The first phase of the Marmaray project opened with an undersea rail tunnel (train pictured) across the Bosphorus strait.