On This Day in History

At a conference held in Baghdad, the governments of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela founded OPEC to help coordinate their petroleum policies and influence global oil prices.

Afghan president Nur Muhammad Taraki (pictured) was overthrown and later killed on the orders of Hafizullah Amin, who succeeded him.

Typhoon Sarah dissipated after causing extensive damage along an erratic path across the Western Pacific, killing 71 in Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Gotō Islands.

The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared the breakaway Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia to be unconstitutional.

President Kumba Ialá (pictured) of Guinea-Bissau was deposed in a bloodless military coup.

Late-2000s financial crisis: The Northern Rock bank received a liquidity support facility from the Bank of England, sparking a bank run—the United Kingdom's first in 150 years.

Physicists of the LIGO and Virgo projects first observed gravitational waves, the existence of which was predicted by Henri Poincaré in 1905.

Drone attacks on major processing facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais forced Saudi Arabia to cut more than half of its oil production.