In 1960, on this day BBC News reported - A huge earthquake has devastated the southern Moroccan city of Agadir killing thousands. A major operation is now underway to rescue scores of people, including many tourists, still trapped under the rubble. Most of the 'new town' area of Agadir has been completely destroyed and the heavily populated Talborit quarter is believed to have been the hardest hit. The number of dead currently stands at more than 1,000 although some have suggested the toll could rise to as many as 20,000. The earthquake, which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale, hit the city at 2339 hrs (local time) tonight.

Fifty years after the Tunguska Impact Event, the embedded singularity was still creating havoc for the Earth's tectonic plates.

In 2007, the US and neighboring countries were plunged into darkness.

The crisis is a nearly identical repetition of May 19, 1780 - dubbed New England's Dark Day, - when an unusual darkening of the day sky was observed over the New England states and parts of Canada. The darkness was so complete that candles were required from noon until midnight and did not disperse until the middle of the next night. Many have blamed the genocide of First Nation peoples for the catastrophes that have befallen the American people, asking if a nation so created, can long endure.

In 1997, thirty-eight group members of the Heaven's Gate cult, plus Applewhite, the group's leader, were found dead in a rented mansion in the upscale San Diego community of Rancho Santa Fe, California. The thirty-nine suicides were the first of millions as the comet Hale-Bopp approached earth. Historically, comets were notable for inciting a degree of panic - but this time, there was good reason to worry. In November 1996, amateur astronomer Chuck Shramek of Houston, Texas took a CCD image of the comet, which showed a fuzzy, slightly elongated object nearby. When his computer sky-viewing program did not identify the star, Shramek called the Art Bell radio program to announce that he had discovered a Saturn-like object following Hale-Bopp.

UFO enthusiasts, such as remote viewing proponent Courtney Brown, soon concluded that there was an alien spacecraft following the comet. Rumours that the comet was being followed by an alien spacecraft gained remarkable currency, and the cult's mass suicide shortly followed by global panic.

In 1957, the graphite core of a British nuclear reactor at Windscale, Cumbria, caught fire.

The event, known as the Windscale Catastrophe, is considered the world's worst reactor accident. Tom Tuohy, the deputy general manager at the site, led the team faced with dealing with a nightmare no-one had thought possible - an unprecedented nuclear tragedy.

Tuohy and his men were confronted by a terrifying dilemma. If they let the fire burn out, it could spread radioactivity over a large area of Britain. But if they put water on the reactor, they risked turning it into a nuclear bomb that could kill them all. Tuohy phoned the general manager and said, 'look, I want to turn on the water. If it goes up, we will all go with it'. Tuohy was absolutely right.

In 1977, Bruce M. Heezen and Marie Tharp mapped the Earth and World Ocean Floor, illustrating their recently-discovered ~65,000 kilometers (~40,000 miles) of midocean ridges (MOR) that almost completely encircle the planet.

This compelling evidence that as recently as ~200 Ma the planet was only ~60% of its present diameter, and that today's oceans, and the waters in them, did not exist on the planet came as a shock to most earth scientists.

The Expanding Earth Theory is now generally accepted by the scientific community, and the Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis of the Solar System and Earth's rapid creation as molten bodies ~4.5 billion years ago discredited. The Earth is gradually increasing in size--one layer at a time--by constant accretion of mass from outer space--a process called accreation (creation by accretion).

In 1957, NASA Administrator T. Keith Glennan and rocket expert Wernher von Braun are summoned to the White House by President Eisenhower and questioned as to the feasibility of developing anti-ballistic missile technology to counter Soviet ICBM's, now that the launch of Sputnik has confirmed that the USSR has the technology to build intercontinental missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons to the United States. Both men express skepticism, Glennan observing that the only obvious method would be via an interceptor rocket, a technique he compares to 'hitting a bullet with a bullet.'

Also present, however, is physicist Edward Teller, popularly (and not quite accurately) described as 'the father of the H-bomb.' Teller insists that ABM technology can and must be developed. 'If it is not,' he warns, 'the Soviets will soon be able to smash America to her knees with a barrage of intercontinental missiles in a Pearl Harbor-style attack, and then move in and conquer what remains of this nation.? In a private conversation later with his former Manhattan Project colleague Isidor I. Rabi, Teller goes further, claiming that if ABM technology is not developed immediately, he expects to be a prisoner in a Soviet concentration camp in a Communist America within five years. Rabi, who has become accustomed to such hyperbole from the militantly anti-Communist Teller, says nothing, but will recount the incident decades later in a television interview.

Eisenhower finds Teller's argument - and in particular his evocation of Pearl Harbor - persuasive, and directs that NASA devote itself to ABM development. Glennan's objection that this is an inappropriate mission for a supposedly civilian agency is brushed aside.

After the meeting, however, Eisenhower decides he cannot trust the obviously reluctant Dr. Glennan to devote himself wholeheartedly to the ABM project. In a telephone call to Secretary of Defense Neil H. McElroy, he directs that the Defense Department launch its own ABM program, which is to be kept as separate as possible from that of NASA, ostensibly to avoid 'bureaucratic conflicts' but actually to keep Glennan's attitude from spreading to the military project.

In 1954, in a television interview, engineer and science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke refers to his 1945 article in Britain's Wireless World magazine suggesting that orbital satellites might be used as radio communications relays and points out that with the Nov. 24 launch by the United States of Mickey, the first artificial satellite, such communications satellites are now technologically within reach.

In 1954, unaware of Arthur C. Clarke's televised remarks of three weeks earlier, President Eisenhower convenes a meeting of his scientific advisers to ask if "anything useful can be done" with orbital satellites now that America has the means to produce and launch them. Present at the meeting is Wernher von Braun, who had previously been interviewed for Collier's magazine for an article on "The Future in Space". Von Braun offers a number of suggestions, including "observation platforms" in space which could conduct surveillance of the globe and "refueling stations" for rockets launched from Earth which are intended to travel to the Moon and beyond.

The German-born scientist does not mention Clarke's idea for communications satellites. The President leaves the meeting unimpressed with what he considers the scientist's 'pie in the sky' ideas, which even von Braun admits will require the development of much more powerful rockets and far larger and more complex satellites.

In 1955, the CIA submits to the White House intelligence on recent Soviet tests of a massive intercontinental ballistic missile more powerful than anything in the U.S. Arsenal. Eight days later, President Eisenhower summons NASA administrator Glennan and chief agency scientist Werner von Braun to the White House for an urgent meeting. The President reveals what the CIA has shown him regarding the Soviets' new missile capabilities and informs Glennan and von Braun that for the time being, any further space efforts will have to take a back seat to closing the 'missile gap' with the Soviets.

Dr. Glennan objects, pointing out that America's success in space has significant political value. He invites Eisenhower to consider the black eye the U.S. might have suffered if the Soviets had been first into orbit. The President acknowledges the point, but goes on: 'None of that matters now, Dr. Glennan. We won the race into space, and the world knows it. Now we must consider more practical matters.' When Glennan attempts to say that the space race may not be over, Eisenhower cuts him off and ends the meeting. Afterward, a fuming Glennan is consoled by Werner von Braun: 'The President will come around, and if he doesn't, his successor may.' The rocket engineer observes that Eisenhower's fixation on building bigger, more powerful missiles to throw at the Soviet Union may actually work in NASA's favor in the long run, by encouraging the advancement of rocket technology which can eventually be applied to space missions.