Today is the 203rd day of 2010. There are 162 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight

1992: Medellin drug cartel leader Pablo Escobar slips past scores of guards at his luxury, custom-built prison and walks to freedom. He dies in a shootout with police the following year.

Other Notable Events

1620: Exiled British Pilgrims set out from Holland for the New World on their ship Speedwell, which leaks so badly they return to England and transfer to the Mayflower.

1793: Scottish fur trader and explorer Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Canadian Pacific coast, becoming the first to cross the North American continent north of Mexico.

1933: US aviator Wiley Post completes first solo airplane flight around the world in seven days, 18 hours and 45 minutes.

1962: Algeria declares independence following protracted war of secession from France.

1976: Japan completes its World War II reparations payments with a final payment to the Philippines.

1981: Turkish extremist Mehmet Ali Agca is sentenced in Rome to life in prison for shooting Pope John Paul II.

1990: Liberian President Samuel K Doe becomes virtual prisoner in presidential mansion as rebels besiege Monrovia and Doe's 500-man security force refuses to let him leave without them.

1994: Citing an economic crisis, Venezuelan President Rafael Caldera suspends constitutional rights.

1996: A UN agency begins dropping tons of food from a cargo plane to help an estimated 700,000 people facing serious food shortages in southern Sudan.

1997: Nearly 400 rebels, believed to be the last of the former Contra rebels, surrender their weapons to President Arnoldo Aleman in northern Nicaragua.

1999: Japan's first deadly hijacking occurs when a man stabs the pilot to death and seizes the controls. The flight lands 49 minutes later in Tokyo, 516 others on board are uninjured. The hijacker says he wanted to fly a real plane.

2003: US forces attack a home in Mosul, Iraq, killing former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's two sons, Uday and Qusay.

2004: Thirty-nine prisoners have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since the fall of 2001 and there have been 94 cases of proven or suspected abuse, the Army says in a broad new report giving a more precise and higher estimate of the scale of the abuse.

2006: A magnitude-5.1 earthquake hits a mountainous area in southwestern China, killing at least 19 people and injuring 60 as it topples homes and sets off landslides.

2007: Turkey's Islamic-rooted ruling party wins parliamentary elections, taking at least 331 of 550 seats despite warnings from the secular opposition that the government is a threat to secular traditions.

2008: European Union foreign ministers agree to toughen sanctions against Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to pressure him to share power with the opposition.

Today's Birthdays

Gregor Johann Mendel, Austrian botanist (1822-1882); Licia Albanese, Italian-born soprano (1913-); George Clinton, US singer (1941-); Alex Trebek, Canadian game show host of Jeopardy (1940-); Danny Glover, US actor (1947-); Willem Dafoe, US actor (1955-); David Spade, US actor/comedian (1964-); Rhys Ifans, Welsh actor (1967-); Rufus Wainwright, US-Canadian rock singer (1973-).

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  18 comments

  5 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  10 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments