On This Day in History

During severe floods in Puerto Rico, about 130 people died as a result of the deadliest single landslide on record in North America.

Near Point Barrow in Alaska, an Iñupiat hunter discovered three gray whales trapped in pack ice, which resulted in an international effort to free them.

Croatian War of Independence: The Yugoslav People's Army conducted an air strike on Banski Dvori, the official residence of the president of Croatia in Zagreb.

Anna Politkovskaya (pictured), a Russian journalist and human-rights activist, was assassinated in the elevator of her apartment block in Moscow.

2008 TC3 exploded above the Nubian Desert in Sudan, in the first time that an asteroid impact had been predicted prior to atmospheric entry.

Palestinian nationalist groups launched armed incursions into the Gaza envelope, starting the Gaza war.

The military wing of the Palestinian nationalist Islamist political organization Hamas massacred people attending an open-air music festival in southern Israel.