The United Nations approved a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state in 1947, but the Arabs rejected it. In May 1948, Israel was officially declared an independent state with David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, as the prime minister.
On this day, in 2001, the first peacekeeping forces from the UK and the US entered Afghanistan to assist the country in recovering after decades of war. After 20 years of occupation, amid ongoing insecurity and unrest, when these forces withdrew from Afghanistan, they chose to use a large aircraft solely for a dog instead of aiding Afghan refugees.
