TODAY is Wednesday, April 28, the 118th day of 2010. There are 247 days left in the year.

Today’s highlight

1876: Britain’s Queen Victoria is declared Empress of India.

Other notable events

1521: Holy Roman Emperor Charles V grants his brother, Archduke Ferdinand, the Hapsburg possessions in Lower Austria, Carinthia, Styria and Carinola.

1655: English fleet destroys pirate fleet of Bey of Tunis and releases prisoners in Algiers.

1770: British navigator Captain James Cook, aboard Endeavor, lands in Australia, naming the natural harbour Botany Bay — now in suburbs of Sydney.

1910: Albanian revolt is suppressed by Turkish Army.

1936: King Farouk ascends to throne in Egypt; Arab high command is formed to unite Arabs against Jewish claims.

1945: Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are executed by partisans in World War II.

1947: A six-man expedition sails from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia.

1952: War with Japan officially ends as a treaty signed by the United States and 47 other countries takes effect.

1967: Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the US Army.

1969: Charles de Gaulle resigns as President of France.

1976: India’s Supreme Court upholds right of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government to imprison political opponents without court hearing.

1980: US President Jimmy Carter accepts the resignation of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who opposed the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing American hostages in Iran.

1988: Soviet-backed Afghan troops shell border areas, killing 15 Pakistanis.

1989: Students in South Korea fight police after authorities ban march to North Korean border.

1992: A new, smaller Yugoslavia is established by Serbia and Montenegro after four other republics, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia secede.

1993: An avalanche of garbage triggered by a methane gas explosion buries squatter huts in Turkey below a city dump, killing at least 18 people and trapping more than 30 others.

1994: Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who betrayed US secrets to the Soviet Union, pleads guilty to espionage and tax evasion. He is sentenced to life in prison without parole.

1995: A leaking gas line explodes during morning rush hour in Taegu, South Korea, killing at least 103.

1996: A gunman slaughters 35 tourists near the ruins of a colonial prison in Tasmania, Australia.

1998: Nigeria’s former deputy leader, General Oladipyo Diya, and five others are sentenced to death by firing squad for plotting to overthrow military leader Gen. Sani Abacha.

1999: Peru’s President Alberto Fujimori orders armoured troop carriers and 20,000 police into the streets to control the first protest against his economic policies.

2000: Guerrillas blow up an Israeli-controlled military outpost in southern Lebanon, killing four pro-Israeli militiamen and wounding three others.

2001: Two thousand people attend an anti-government rally in Singapore demanding more civil liberties and protesting the ruling party. Singapore has one of Asia’s highest standards of living but also some of the world’s strictest laws.

2003: Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline PLC, the world’s largest producer of AIDS drugs, announces it will reduce the price of its popular AIDS medication Combivir to 90 cents a day, from US$1.70, in 63 developing countries.

2004: Macedonia’s liberal prime minister Branko Crvenkovski wins presidential election with 62 percent of the votes cast. But his conservative opponent Sasko Kedev, who garnered 37 percent, claims voter fraud and demands the ballot be annulled. Crvenkovski and Kedev were seeking to replace former President Boris Trajkovski, who died in a February airplane crash in Bosnia.

2005: Iraq’s National Assembly approves the country’s first democratically elected government, a Shiite-dominated body that excludes the Sunni minority from meaningful positions and threatens efforts to dampen the deadly insurgency.

2006: The International Atomic Energy Agency says in a report that Iran has defied a UN Security Council call to freeze uranium enrichment and is stonewalling efforts to determine if it is developing nuclear arms.

2007: The Taliban frees Celine Cordelier, a French aid worker who was kidnapped and held for more than three weeks along with another French citizen and three Afghan colleagues.

2008: Austrian Josef Fritzl, 73, confesses to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in a windowless cell with a soundproofed door and fathering seven children. He also tells investigators that he tossed the body of one of the children in an incinerator when the infant died after birth.

2009: Pope Benedict XVI embraces survivors of Italy’s deadly earthquake as he walks through their muddy tent camp and demands “serious soul-searching” from those responsible for the shoddy construction blamed for many of the 296 deaths.

Today’s birthdays:

Yi Sun-shin, Korean admiral and national hero (1545-1598); James Monroe, U.S. president (1758-1831); Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, Portuguese dictator (1889-1970); Kurt Goedel, Austrian-born US mathematician (1906-1978); Saddam Hussein, Iraqi dictator (1937-2006); Harper Lee, US author (1926-); Ann-Margret, Swedish-born US actress (1941-); Penelope Cruz, Spanish actress (1974-); Jessica Alba, US actress (1981-).