Bits of History (April 13)

1964: Sidney Poitier became the first black actor to win an Oscar, taking the best actor award for “Lilies of the Field”.

1966: Abdul Salam Arif, president of Iraq, was killed in a helicopter crash.

1975: Christian militiamen in Lebanon killed 22 Palestinians on a bus in the Ain er-Rummaineh suburb of Beirut. This attack is generally accepted as the starting point of the Lebanese Civil War.

2016: Syria holds parliamentary election, denounced by opponents of President Bashar al-Assad and Western powers as illegitimate.