This Day in History (1960): New Purchasing Department established by Aramco

From the Aug. 17, 1960, edition of the Sun and Flare

A new department, Dhahran Purchasing, will be established Oct. 1 to handle the steadily increasing volume of local buying of materials and supplies, Aramco President Thomas C. Barger announced.

The new department, a part of the Materials Supply, Traffic, and Transportation Organization headed by vice president R.S. Hatch, will take over activities of the Purchasing division of Materials Supply and Traffic, General Office.

Phillip R. Hassan, now general purchasing agent, Aramco Overseas Company, The Hague, will be manager of the Dhahran Purchasing Department.

He has held purchasing positions with Aramco in San Francisco and New York, and was with the M. S. and T. Department in Dhahran from 1950 until 1955.

President Barger's announcement stated that the new department is being established because of the expanding scope and volume of Aramco's local purchases, which now amount to about SR31 million annually.

With the continued interest and cooperation of Saudi merchants and importers, the amount of local purchases is expected to increase substantially.

Also on this date

2008 — American swimmer Michael Phelps becomes the first person to win eight gold medals at one Olympic Games

1998 — U.S. President bill Clinton admits in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, admitting before the nation that he "misled people" about the relationship

1988 — American lawyer and politician Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. dies in Poughkeepsie, New York

1977 — The Soviet icebreaker "Arkitka" becomes the first surface ship to reach the North Pole

1962 — Peter Fechter is shot and bleeds to death while trying to cross the new Berlin Wall

1958 — "Pioneer 0", America's first attempt at lunar orbit, is launched using the first Thor-Able rocket and fails

1953 — First meeting of Narcotics Anonymous takes place in Southern California

1945 — George Orwell's "Animal Farm" is first published

1915 — A Category 4 hurricane hits Galveston, Texas, with winds at 135 miles per hour

1896 — Bridget Driscoll becomes the first case of a pedestrian killed in a collision with a car in the United Kingdom

1866 — The Grand Duchy of Baden announces its withdrawal from the German Confederation and signs a treaty of peace and alliance with Prussia

1836 — British parliament accepts registration of births, marriages, and deaths

1688 — A magnitude 8.0 earthquake in North Anatolia causes 8,000 deaths in the Ottoman Empire