This Day in History (1963): Schools for Saudi girls to open in Rahima, al-Khobar

From the July 17, 1963, edition of the Sun and Flare

The first schools in the Eastern Province designed and built especially for Saudi girls are being readied in West al-Khobar and Rahima for the fall term.

Each school will have classroom, recreation, and supporting facilities for 300 students in Grades 1 through 6.

The school buildings, as well as funds for maintaining them and paying teachers' and staff salaries, are being provided by Aramco, which is assisting the Saudi Government in furnishing more adequate facilities for girls' education in Eastern Province communities where there are large concentration of company employees.

When completed, the new buildings will be turned over to the Director of Girls Schools in the Eastern Province, Shayk Ali al-Suqayr, whose office in Dammam, comes under the Directorate General of Girls Schools in Riyadh.

Unlike the 15 schools Aramco already has built for boys in the Eastern Province as part of Saudi Arabia’s education system, the new schools for girls will be one-story structures in the shape of a large "E." Two of the wings are to contain a total of 12 classrooms, and a third will have space for homemaking and art instruction, a library, and a small clinic.

Caption for top photo: ARCHITECT’S PERSPECTIVE of new, identical schools for girls in West al-Khobar and Rahima shows classroom wings (right and center), homemaking and instruction wings (left), and assembly hall space (foreground).

Also on this date

2018 — Scott S. Sheppard announces that his team has discovered a dozen irregular moons of Jupiter

2006 — A massive tsunami earthquake severely impacts Java, killing 668 people and leaving more than 9,000 injured

1998 — A massive earthquake in Papua New Guinea triggers a tsunami that kills up to 2,700 people, with several thousand injured

1989 — The B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber completes its first flight

1976 — The opening of the Summer Olympics in Montreal is marred by 25 African teams boycotting the games because of New Zealand's participation. The IOC had previously barred countries that had participated in South African sporting events during apartheid, but did not bar New Zealand after it had participated in South African events.

1962 — The "Small Boy" test shot Little Feller I becomes the final atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada national Security Site

1955 — Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California

1938 — Douglas Corrigan takes off from Brooklyn, then flies the "wrong way" to Ireland, and becomes known as "Wrong Way" Corrigan

1918 — The "RMS Carpathia," the ship that rescued 705 survivors from the sinking of the "RMS Titanic," is sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; five people die

1902 — Willis Carrier creates the firs air conditioner in Buffalo, New York

1867 — The Harvard Dental School, the first such school in the U.S. affiliated with a university, is established in Boston

1717 — King George I of Great Britain sails down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians as George Frederic Handel's "Water Music" is premiered

1402 — Zhu Di, better known as the Yongle Emperor, assumes the throne over the Ming Dynasty