This Day in History (1972): Skyline change at Ras Tanura

From the May 3, 1972, edition of the Sun and Flare

SIX NEW COLUMNS for processing waste gas will soon manufacture more LPG for Aramco's growing markets here and abroad. Work on the first increment begin in July 1971 by driving nearly 1,000 steel piles 40 feet into the ground.

This piling will support the tons of steel piping and process equipment now being erected at Ras Tanura’s Plants 25 and 26.

The highest column reaches 140 into the air, and the heaviest weighs 320 tons.

Aramco Overseas Company is coordinating all engineering effort. Ras Tanura construction engineer T.J. Ullsey is administering the Refinery work with one prime contractor, Shwai'ir Cosntruction Company.

LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) is an energy source easily package in small, pressurized containers. Conveniently distributed in this form, it is used for cooking, heating, and lighting in remote areas where costly pipeline expansion is prohibitive.

Also on this date

2016 - About 80,000 people are evacuated from their homes in Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, as a wildfire rips through the community, destroying about 2,400 homes and buildings

2007 - The 3-year-old Madeline McCann disappears in Praia da Luz, Portugal, starting "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history"

2001 - The U.S. loses its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission for the first time sicne the commission was formed in 1947

1979 - Margaret Thatcher wins the United Kingdom general election. The next day, she becomes the first female British Prime Minister.

1978 - The first unsolicited bulk commercial email (which would later become known as "spam") is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States

1963 - Police in Birmingham, Alabama, switch tactics and respond with violent force to stop the Birmingham campaign protesters. Images of the violent clashes appear worldwide, brining wide-ranging attention to the civil rights movement.

1952 - The Kentucky Derby is televised for the first time

1921 - Ireland is partitioned under British law by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, creating Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland

1848 - The boar-crested Anglo Saxon Benty Grange helmet is discovered in a barrow on the Benty Grange farm in Derbyshire

1481 - The largest of three earthquakes strikes the island of Rhodes and causes an estimated 30,000 casualties