– Major League Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis confirms the ban of the eight Chicago Black Sox, the day after they were acquitted by a Chicago court. 1936 – Jesse Owens wins the 100 metre dash, defeating Ralph Metcalfe, at the Berlin Olympics. 1936 – A fire wipes out Kursha-2 in the Meshchera Lowlands, Ryazan Oblast, Russia, killing 1,200 and leaving only 20 survivors. 1940 – World War II: Italian forces begin the invasion of British Somaliland. 1946 – Santa Claus Land, the world's first themed amusement park, opens in Santa Claus, Indiana, United States. 1948 – Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union. 1949 – The Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League finalize the merger that would create the National Basketball Association. 1958 – The world's first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, becomes the first vessel to complete a submerged transit of the geographical North Pole. 1959 – Portugal's state police force PIDE fires upon striking workers in Bissau, Portuguese Guinea, killing over 50 people. 1960 – Niger gains independence from France. 1972 – The United States Senate ratifies the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. 1975 – A privately chartered Boeing 707 strikes a mountain peak and crashes near Agadir, Morocco, killing 188. 1977 – Tandy Corporation announces the TRS-80, one of the world's first mass-produced personal computers. 1981 – Senegalese opposition parties, under the leadership of Mamadou Dia, launch the Antiimperialist Action Front – Suxxali Reew Mi. 1997 – Oued El-Had and Mezouara massacre in Algeria: A total of 116 villagers killed, 40 in Oued El-Had and 76 in Mezouara. 1997 – The tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, Sky Tower in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, opens after two-and-a-half years of construction. 2004 – The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty reopens after being closed since the September 11 attacks. 2005 – President of Mauritania Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya is overthrown in a military coup while attending the funeral of King Fahd in Saudi Arabia. 2007 – Former deputy director of the Chilean secret police Raúl Iturriaga is captured after having been on the run following a conviction for kidnapping. 2010 – Widespread rioting erupts in Karachi, Pakistan, after the assassination of a local politician, leaving at least 85 dead and at least 17 billion Pakistani rupees (US$200 million) in damage. 2014 – A 6.1 magnitude earthquake