HISTORY TODAY

 1959 – The Ford Motor Company announces the discontinu- ation of the unpopular Edsel.

 1967 – The establishment of TVB, the first wireless commer- cial television station in Hong Kong.

 1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the “Ocean of Storms”) and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.

 1985 – Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.

 1994 – In the United Kingdom, the first National Lottery draw is held. A £1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of cor- rectly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.

 1998 – Vincent van Gogh’s Portrait of the Artist Without Beard sells at auction for US$71.5 million.

 1999 – Shenzhou 1: The People’s Republic of China launch- es its first Shenzhou spacecraft.

 2004 – The Malice at the Palace: The worst brawl in NBA his- tory, Ron Artest suspended 86 games (rest of season), Stephen Jackson suspended 30 games.

 2010 – The first of four explosions takes place at the Pike River Mine in New Zealand; 29 people are killed in the nation’s worst mining disaster since 1914.

 2013 – A double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut kills 23 people and injures 160 others.