This Day in History (1975): Lady Sophie Ready

From the May 21, 1975, edition of The Arabian Sun

That's 920 tons of cargo the M/S Lady Sophie is getting ready to offload at the Ras Tanura West Pier.

The column nearest the ramp weighs 500 tons, is 26 feet in diameter, and 110 feet long. The smaller column weighs 420 tons, is 20 feet in diameter, and 140 feet long.

These columns and the one aboard the M/S Bellatrix, which recently arrived at the West Pier, are all part of the expansion of Aramco's NGL facilities in Abqaiq and Ras Tanura.

Also on this date

2017 — Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus perform their final show at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum

2011 — Radio personality Harold Camping predicted the world would end on this date

2005 — The tallest roller coaster in the world, Kingda Ka, opens at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey

1992 — After 30 seasons, Johnny Caron hosts his penultimate episode and last featuring guests (Robin Williams and Bette Midler) of "The Tonight Show"

1981 — Transamerica Corporation agrees to sell United Artists to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after the box office failure of the 1980 film "Heaven's Gate"

1972 — Michelangelo’s Pieta in Rome is damaged by vandal Laszlo Toth, a mentally disturbed Hungarian

1946 — Physicist Louis Slotin is fatally irradiated during an experiment at Los Alamos National Laboratory

1937 — North Pole-1, a Soviet station, becomes the first scientific research settlement to operate on the drift ice of the Arctic Ocean

1927 — Charles Lindbergh touches down at Le Bourget field in Paris, completing the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean

1904 — The Federation Internationale de Football Association, FIFA, is founded in Paris

1864 — The Ionian Islands reunite with Greece

1851 — Slavery in Colombia is abolished

1792 — A deadly tsunami created by the collapse of a lava dome on Mount Unzen in Japan kills nearly 15,000 people