Today’s Highlight

2005: Charles, Prince of Wales, and Camilla Parker Bowles wed in a civil ceremony at Guildhall, Windsor. She takes the title Duchess of Cornwall.

Other Notable Events

837: Halley’s Comet makes its closest known passage to Earth: Five million kilometres (three million miles).

1948: Jewish militia attack the Arab village of Deir Yassin in what is now Israel, killing more than 100 Arabs and forcing the rest to flee.

1949: UN International Court of Justice delivers its first decision, holding Albania responsible for incidents in Corfu Channel and awarding Britain damages.

1963: Britain’s former Prime Minister Winston Churchill is made an honorary US citizen.

1974: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh sign agreement to repatriate 195 Pakistani prisoners of war.

1978: Troops in Somalia crush attempted coup by army officers.

1988: China’s National Peoples Congress names Li Peng as premier.

1989: Sixteen people are reported killed as Soviet troops rush crowd of protesters in a central square of Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

1990: A three-decade ban on political activity is lifted in Nepal, and hundreds of thousands celebrate.

1991: UN Security Council establishes a 1,440-member peacekeeping force to monitor the Iraq-Kuwait border and the withdrawal of US forces from southern Iraq.

1992: Sali Berisha is elected as Albania’s first non-communist president since World War II; former Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega is convicted in Miami of eight drug and racketeering charges.

1995: President Alberto Fujimori wins a second five-year term in Peru’s first peaceful election since 1980.

1998: Some 150 Muslims are trampled to death in a stampede in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on the last day of the annual hajj pilgrimage.

1999: Niger President Ibrahim Bare Mainassara is assassinated by his personal guard unit. The guard commander declares himself the new president two days later.

2001: Rioting breaks out in Cincinnati, Ohio, erupting out of what had begun as a peaceful demonstration against the shooting two days earlier of an unarmed black youth by the police.

2002: The funeral of Queen Elizabeth, the queen mother, is held in London’s Westminster Abbey.

2003: US-led forces take control of Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. US marines entered the city from the east while soldiers controlling the western and southern approaches to the city.

2005: Haitian police shoot and kill Remissainthe Ravix, a prominent rebel leader who helped force former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile the previous year;

2006: Australia’s foreign minister denies UN accusations his department was involved in alleged kickbacks paid by the country’s monopoly wheat exporter to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

2008: The Olympic torch touches down in San Francisco, its only stop in North America, where the relay is cut short and the closing ceremony is relocated because of demonstrators.