Today is the 351st day of 2010. There are 14 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

2007: A gang-rape victim sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her is pardoned by the Saudi king after the case sparked rare criticism from the US, the kingdom’s top ally.

Other Events

1777: France recognises the US’ independence.

1885: France acquires control of Madagascar’s foreign relations.

1903: Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful sustained powered flights by a heavier-than-air craft, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1908: The Ottoman Parliament holds first meeting.

1922: The last British troops leave the Irish Free State.

1944: The US Army announces the end of its policy of excluding Japanese-Americans from the West Coast.

1961: A fire sweeps through a circus tent at Niteroi, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killing 323 people, mostly children, and injuring 800. A disgruntled ex-employee admits to starting the fire.

1967: Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming at Portsea, Victoria.

1971: India and Pakistan end a two-week war in East Pakistan — now Bangladesh.

1985: Uganda’s military government and its guerrilla rivals sign peace treaty dividing power and ending almost five years of civil war.

1990: Tens of thousands of students and workers strike across Romania, calling for government’s resignation as they commemorate the first anniversary of the uprising that ousted Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

1991: Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev agree to dissolve the Soviet Union and proclaim a new commonwealth on New Year’s Day.

1992: Egyption officials fight to save one of Cairo’s picturesque and historic quarters, the early Christian mecca at Babylon, that was rattled by an October earthquake.

1995: Elections in Russia give the parliamentary majority to communists and their allies.

1997: Thirty-four countries sign a treaty aimed at eradicating bribery in international business.

2002: The Congolese government and the country’s main rebel groups sign a peace accord in Pretoria, South Africa in hopes of ending Congo’s four-year-old civil war.

2003: The US and four Central American nations — Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua — reach a free trade agreement. CAFTA calls for eliminating tariffs on all industrial goods over 10 years and phasing out most agricultural trade barriers over 18 years.

2005: Anti-globalisation protesters in Hong Kong armed with bamboo sticks rush police and try to storm the convention centre where trade accord negotiations are being held. At least 41 people are injured and 900 detained after the worst street violence in Hong Kong in decades.

2009: Scientists have witnessed the eruption of the deepest submarine volcano ever discovered, capturing for the first time video of fiery bubbles of molten lava as they exploded 4,000 feet (1,220 metres) beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean in what researchers are calling a major geological discovery.