Today’s Highlight

2003: The World Health Organisation (WHO) removes Beijing, China’s capital, from its list of areas where severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was spreading, and lifts advice that travellers postpone all but essential travel there.

Other Notable Events

1497: Italian explorer Giovanni Caboto, also known as John Cabot, on a mission for the English crown, discovers Canada but thinks it is Asia. The discovery forms the basis for English claims to Canada.

1793: The first republican constitution in France is adopted, providing for universal male suffrage and the right to free public education. The constitution is soon suspended when the Reign of Terror starts.

1932: A bloodless coup ends absolute monarchy in Thailand, initiating the so-called Constitutional Era.

1944: A pro-Nazi Danish police group sets part of Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen on fire in revenge for Danish sabotage actions.

1947: Aeroplane pilot Kenneth Arnold sees a squadron of unidentified flying objects near Mount Rainier, in Washington state, and coins the phrase “flying saucers”.

1948: Soviet Union begins Berlin blockade, halting road and rail traffic between Berlin and West Germany, leading to the start of Berlin airlift.

1992: Israel’s Labour party celebrates its election upset of hard-line Likud as Yitzhak Rabin promises to let Palestinians govern themselves.

1997: Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s government scraps plan for a constitutional convention to decide whether Australia should become a republic separate from Britain.

1999: Some 30 gunmen, demanding jobs, seize control of a Haitian orphanage they graduated from and hold it for about 12 hours before surrendering.

2001: Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic lashes out at a decree ordering his extradition to the Hague for trial on war crimes, calling it “legal savagery”.

2002: US President George W Bush says Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat must be replaced before the US can back the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

2004: Iraqi insurgents assault police stations and government buildings across Iraq in rapid-fire synchronised attacks to demonstrate their power ahead of the formal end of the US occupation.

2005: Record-high floods rush through the industrial heart of southern China, putting factories and railway lines in the path of torrents that had already killed at least 536 people nationwide.

2006: Thousands of protesters demand the ouster of East Timor’s prime minister, blaming him for provoking violence and political chaos.

2007: Iraqi court sentences Saddam Hussein’s cousin, known as “Chemical Ali”, and two other former regime officials to death for hanging up to 180,000 Kurds in the 1980s.

2008: Palestinian militants fire three home-made rockets into southern Israel, the first such attack since a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza militants took effect the previous week.

Today’s Birthdays

Nuno Alvares Pereira, Portuguese leader (1360-1431); St John of the Cross, Spanish mystic (1542-1591); Ambrose Bierce, US writer (1842-1914); Lord Horatio Kitchener, English soldier (1850-1916); Victor Frances Hess, Austrian physicist (1883-1964); Jack Dempsey, US world heavyweight boxing champion (1895-1983); Al Molinaro, US actor (1919-).