In 1979 The worst nuclear power incident in US history occurred as a power plant on Three Mile Island began spewing radioactive steam into the atmosphere. A faulty pressure valve in a water pump was the initial cause of the radiation leak and allowing the core to overheat, reaching dangerous levels. The leak began at 4:00am local time but the incident was not reported to the public for four hours as the plant operators attempted to control the situation. Officials declared a general emergency and pregnant women and children within a five mile radius of the site were told to evacuate the area. More than 100,000 people fled the surrounding area. Plant operators had been attempting to contain the leak had shut down the water pump system. It wasn’t until 8:00pm that they realised that they needed to restart the water cooling system in order to cool the core and prevent a catastrophic melt down. The core temperature started to drop and the meltdown was averted but it came very close with half of the core was molten but the protective shielding remained in tact and kept the radiation in. No one died as a direct result of the incident.

In 1939 the Spanish Civil War ended. From 1923 Spain was controlled by a military dictatorship but was hit hard by the ‘Great Depression’ and by 1929 the military dictatorship collapsed. In 1931 Spanish King Alfonso XIII approved a referendum to decide the fate of Spain. Either the monarchy would remain or Spain would become a republic. The people of Spain spoke and voted for an end to the monarchy, and so King Alfonso abdicated from the throne and the republicans came to power. There was a bitter rivalry in the country between the right-wing Nationalists (made up mainly of the army and the rich, the landowners, business owners, Roman Catholic Church and royalists) while the left-wing Republicans (mainly the poor, working classes, and unions). In 1936 the armed forces, led by General Francisco Franco, rebelled against the controlling republicans and began taking over regions of Spain that had been Republican strongholds. Franco led the Nationalist forces under Spain’s Fascist party known as the Falange. Hitler and Mussolini aided Spain’s Nationalist movement with weapons (plane and tanks) in order to increase the growth of fascism in Europe while Communist Russia aided the left-wing, socialist republicans in an effort to increase the growth of Communism. France and Britain wanted neither side to win and so set up a non-intervention committee, but many people from all over Europe and the Americas wanted to help on the fight against the fascists and so the ‘International Brigade’ of fighters was created with 15,000 fighters to aid the Republicans. The brigade fought well and managed to hold the Capital of Madrid until it fell on this day in 1939. The civil war was over and the Nationalist won. Europe had another right-wing dictator in General Francisco Franco to ally with Hitler and Mussolini in World War II.