Today’s Highlight

2000: Some 250 Indians belonging to the Naua tribe, believed to have been decimated 80 years ago, are located in the jungles of the Amazon state of Acre in Brazil.

Other Events

1870: Western Australia is granted representative government.

1896: France annexes Madagascar. 1920: Women in the US get the right to vote as the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution is ratified.

1964: South Africa is banned from participating in the Olympic Games in Tokyo for refusing to condemn apartheid.

1990: The death toll from Sri Lanka's civil war is at 3,350 persons. At least 2,000 are civilians. A 13-month ceasefire in the seven-year-old conflict between the army and ethnic Tamil separatist rebels was broken in June.

1998: Congolese rebels send President Laurent Kabila's troops fleeing as they advance to within 200 kilometers (125 miles) of the capital, now deprived of electricity.

2002: Heads of government from Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia convene in Berlin to organise financial relief efforts after more than a week of the worst flooding that led to at least 109 deaths across Europe, and caused an estimated $20 billion in damage.

2003: Fourteen European tourists kidnapped in late February and March by Algerian Islamic militants are freed in northern Mali.

2005: Security forces kill Saleh Mohammed al-Aoofi, al-Qaida's top leader in Saudi Arabia, and five other Islamic extremists in gunbattles in Medina in the first major anti-terror sweep since King Abdullah took the throne earlier in the month.

2006: UN and maritime agencies promise help to Lebanon to clean up an oil slick caused by Israeli bombing during monthlong fighting. The spill has been described as Lebanon's worstever environmental disaster.

2007: Two men hijack a Turkish passenger plane bound for Istanbul, holding several people hostage for more than four hours before surrendering, officials said.

2008: Pervez Musharraf resigns as the president of Pakistan.

Today's Birthdays

Antonio Salieri, Italian composer (1750-1825); Meriweather Lewis, American explorer (1774-1809); Lord John Russell, English statesman (1792-1878); Shelley Winters, US actress (1920-2006); Roberto Clemente, Puerto Rican baseball player (1934-1972); Roman Polanski, Polish film director (1935-); Robert Redford, US actor (1936-).