Today, Tuesday, May 18, is the 138th day of 2010. There are 227 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

1899: International peace conference is convened at The Hague in the Netherlands. It adopts conventions on warfare and creates the Permanent Court of Arbitration, now the UN International Court of Justice.

Other Notable Events

1830: Edwin Budding of England signs an agreement for the manufacture of his invention, the lawn mower.

1896: The US Supreme Court endorses the concept of “separate but equal” racial segregation with its Plessy vs. Ferguson decision, a ruling that is overturned 58 years later in Brown vs Board of Education.

1910: Haley’s Comet is seen from Earth as it moves across the Sun.

1951: The UN, previously without a permanent home, begins to move into headquarters in New York City.

1954: European Convention of Human Rights goes into effect.

1967: United Nations agrees to Egyptian demand to withdraw UN forces from Gaza Strip.

1970: Khmer Rouge forces advance to within 40 kilometres (25 miles) of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. They are repulsed, but take the capital five years later.

1974: India explodes a nuclear bomb for the first time, in the deserts of Rajasthan.

1993: Violent riots break out in Copenhagen, Denmark, after a majority of Danes in a referendum approve the Maastricht treaty calling for a closer European Union.

1994: Military observers returning to the Rwandan countryside report ethnic killings of at least 200,000; Israel’s three decades of occupation in the Gaza Strip ends as Israeli troops complete their withdrawal from Gaza City and other urban areas and Palestinian authorities take over.

1997: Rebels led by Laurent Kabila take control of Kinshasa, capital of Zaire — now the Democratic Republic of the Congo — after overrunning the country in seven months.

1999: Sierra Leone’s government and the country’s rebels agree to a cease-fire to end seven years of savage fighting.

2000: The UN Security Council unanimously approves an arms embargo against Ethiopia and Eritrea following the latest flare-up in their two-year border war.

2001: Independent National Security Archive reveals that former US President Dwight D Eisenhower kept secret from US allies his orders to authorise military commanders to launch retaliatory nuclear attacks.

2002: Police arrest Kim Hong Gul, the youngest son of South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, on suspicion of influence-peddling. He is accused of taking bribes worth $2 million.

2004: Stunning her supporters, Sonia Gandhi (born Edvige Antonia Albina Maino) announces she would “humbly decline” to be the next prime minister of India, side-stepping Hindu nationalist outrage over the prospect of a foreign-born woman leading the nation. Gandhi, an Italian who became an Indian citizen 21 years earlier when she married former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, later nominates Manmohan Singh for the post.

2005: Police arrest nine North Africans during raids in northern Italy in a crackdown on alleged extremist cells accused of planning terror attacks in Italy and abroad.

2007: The Vatican confirms that Pope Benedict XVI will loosen restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass, reviving a rite that was essentially swept away by the revolutionary reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council.

Today’s Birthdays

Omar Khayyam, Persian poet, astronomer and mathematician (1048-1131); Bertrand Russell, English philosopher (1872-1970); Walter Gropius, German architect/director of Bauhaus (1883-1969); Frank Capra, US movie director (1897-1991); John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla), Polish-born pope (1918-2005); Dame Margot Fonteyn, English ballerina (1919-1991); George Strait, US country singer (1952-); Tina Fey, US comedian and actress (1970-); Jack Johnson, US musician (1975-); Chow Yun-Fat, Hong Kong-born actor (1955-).