Today is the 20th day of 2010. There are 345 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight

2009: Barack Hussein Obama is inaugurated as the 44th president -- and first black chief executive -- of the US.

Other Events

1265: England's Parliament meets for the first time.

1841: The island of Hong Kong is ceded to Great Britain.

1887: New Zealand annexes Kermadec Islands in Pacific; US Senate approves leasing Pearl Harbour in Hawaii as naval base.

1921: The new Parliament in Ankara declares that the country will be called Turkey, and vests executive power in a council led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

1942: Nazi officials hold the notorious Wannsee conference, during which they arrive at their "final solution" that calls for exterminating Europe's Jews.

1958: Soviet Union threatens Greece with economic sanctions if it agrees to the installation of NATO missile bases on Greek territory.

1968: President Aref's regime in Iraq is deposed, and a new government is formed under Gen Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr.

1986: A bloodless military coup ousts Lesotho's authoritarian Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan; the US observes the first federal holiday in honour of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

1989: George H W Bush is sworn in as the 41st president of the US.

1990: Soviet troops storm Azerbaijani capital of Baku, leaving dozens dead and wounded. President Mikhail Gorbachev defends action on national television.

1991: In Moscow, hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens protest bloody crackdown on Lithuania and demand resignation of President Mikhail Gorbachev.

1992: Two former East German border guards are convicted in last killing at Berlin Wall.

1993: Bill Clinton is inaugurated as the 42nd president of the US, taking over from George H W Bush.

1996: Lebanese man is arrested in the fire that killed 10 immigrants at a shelter in Luebeck, Germany.

1997: Bill Clinton begins his second term as US president.

1998: Dr James Robl at the University of Massachusetts and Dr Steven Stice of Advanced Cell Technology Inc announce that they have successfully cloned two identical, genetically engineered calves.

1999: Riots between Christians and Muslims enter a third day on the Indonesian island of Ambon. Twenty-two people die, 100 are badly injured and more than 30 houses are burned.

2001: Civil rights leader the Rev Jesse Jackson appears in public in Chicago for the first time since acknowledging he fathered a child in an extramarital affair; Protesting Filipinos force President Joseph Estrada to step down and Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is sworn in as the Philippines' new president.

2002: The government and Colombia's largest guerrilla group reach an agreement on a timetable for ceasefire talks aimed at ending the country's long-running civil war.

2003: Former Serbian President Milan Milutinovic surrenders to the UN International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands, to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in a 1999 crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

2004: Israeli warplanes strike Hezbollah guerrilla bases in southern Lebanon, threatening to reignite another Arab-Israeli front that has been mostly calm

for years.

2006: Japan halts all imports of US beef because of mad cow fears threatening millions of dollars in American exports and sending officials scrambling to repair delicate trade relations.

2007: Mexico extradites Osiel Cardenas, a purported drug cartel boss believed to be running his gang from jail, and three other alleged major traffickers to the US, an unprecedented move welcomed by Washington.

2008: A Turkish court again blocks access to the popular video-sharing website YouTube because of clips allegedly insulting the country's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. It is illegal in Turkey to insult the revered figure.

--AP

  5 comments

  0 comments

  3 comments

  3 comments

  1 comments

  0 comments

  7 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  1 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments