Today is the 248th day of 2012. There are 118 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight

2007: Hurricane Felix slams into Central America and Hurricane Henriette hits Baja California as a record-setting hurricane season gets even wilder with twin storms making landfall on the same day.

Other Events

422: St Boniface I ends his reign as Catholic Pope.

1781: Los Angeles is founded by Spanish settlers.

1872: Anglo-French dual control of Egypt is re-established.

1917: The American expeditionary force in France suffers its first fatalities in World War I.

1929: German dirigible Graf Zeppelin completes trip around world.

1932: France and Poland sign mutual assistance agreement.

1939: South Africa and Canada declare war on Germany.

1951: In America's first live coast-to-coast television broadcast, US President Harry Truman addresses the nation from the Japanese peace treaty conference in San Francisco.

1957: Egypt and Syria form economic union.

1964: British Commonwealth troops move against Indonesian guerrillas in Malaya.

1970: In Chile, Salvador Allende becomes the first Marxist freely elected president in the Western hemisphere.

1972: US swimmer Mark Spitz wins a record seventh Olympic gold medal in the 400-metre relay at the Munich Summer Olympics.

1974: United States establishes diplomatic relations with East Germany, the last major western nation to do so.

1975: Representatives of Egypt and Israel sign interim peace agreement in Geneva, Switzerland.

1980: According to Iraqi count, the Iran-Iraq war starts this day with Iranian shelling of Iraqi border posts.

1987: UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar says Iran has agreed to negotiate implementation of UN peace plan to end its war with Iraq.

1990: Prime ministers of South and North Korea meet for first time; US President George H.W. Bush asks Congress to write off Egypt's $7-billion debt to the United States as a sign of appreciation for help in Gulf War.

1993: Fighting breaks out in eastern Liberia and spills over for the first time into the Ivory Coast.

1995: The UN women's conference opens in Beijing.

1996: New Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shakes the hand of Palestine Liberation Organisation chief Yasser Arafat at a meeting on the Israel-Gaza border to help clear the air of animosity.

1997: Three Buddhist nuns acknowledge in Senate testimony that their Los Angeles temple illegally reimbursed donors after a fund-raiser attended by US Vice-President Al Gore.

1998: The first genocide sentence by an international court is handed down by UN tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, which condemns a former Rwandan prime minister to life in prison for the slaughter of more than 500,000 Rwandans.

2002: A court in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, convicts the speaker of parliament, Akbar Tandjung, on charges of abuse of power and corruption, sentencing him to three years in prison.

2008: US Vice-President Dick Cheney insisted that Georgia will join NATO and backed its attempts to rebuild from its war with Russia on Thursday, using a trip to former Soviet republics as a show of US support for their pro-Western leaders.

2009: A US jet drops 500-pound (225k) bombs on two tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban before dawn, triggering a huge explosion that Afghan officials say kills more than 70 people.

2010: Protesters angry over his role in the Iraq war hurl shoes and eggs at former British Prime Minister Tony Blair who holds the first public signing of his memoir amid high security in Ireland's capital.

2011: Negotiations over the surrender of one of Moammar Gadhafi's remaining strongholds collapse, and Libyan rebels wait for the green light to launch their final attack on the besieged town of Bani Walid.

Today's Birthdays

Francois Chateaubriand, French author (1768-1848); Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer (1824-1896); Daniel Burnham, US architect/city planner (1896-1912); Antonin Artaud, French poet (1896-1948); Henry Ford II, US industrialist (1917-1987); Dawn Fraser, Australian Olympic swimming champion (1937-); Damon Wayans, US actor/comedian (1960-); Beyonce Knowles, singer/actress (1981-).