Today is the seventh day of 2011. There are 358 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

1959: The US recognises Fidel Castro’s Cuban government.

Other Events

1610: The astronomer Galileo Galilei sees four of Jupiter’s moons.

1789: The first US presidential election is held. Americans vote for electors who, a month later, choose George Washington to be the first president.

1913: A cracking process to obtain gasoline from crude oil is patented in the US.

1927: Commercial trans-Atlantic telephone service is inaugurated between New York and London.

1961: African heads of state issue African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights at Casablanca.

1968: Government of Lebanon resigns after Israeli commando raid at Beirut airport; the Surveyor 7 space probe makes a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.

1972: India resists US pressure and grants full diplomatic recognition to China.

1973: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos suspends scheduled plebiscite on new constitution, saying his country is slipping back into subversion and corruption.

1979: Vietnamese forces capture the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government.

1990: Thousands of Romanians demonstrate nationwide to protest the number of ex-Communists in the interim government.

1991: Coup attempt in Haiti by former leader of paramilitary organisation Tontons Macoute, Roger Lafontant, fails.

1994: About 750,000 gallons (2.8 million litres) of heating oil blacken beaches on Puerto Rico when a barge runs aground.

1997: In Algiers, Algeria, a car bomb explodes in a bustling shopping district, killing at least 13 people and wounding 100 others.

1998: The Canadian government formally apologises to the country’s indigenous people for 150 years of oppression and establishes a “healing” fund.

1999: The US Senate opens the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, the first such trial in 130 years.

2000: An exhausted 14-year-old Tibetan Buddhist leader reaches India after trekking across the snowy Himalayas after defecting from Chinese-ruled Tibet.

2001: A general practitioner in Manchester, England may have killed more than 200 patients over almost 24 years, a clinical study of Dr Harold Shipman’s medical practice shows. He is sentenced to life in prison for the deaths of 15 patients.

2003: A Congo military court sentences 26 defendants to death for the January 2001 assassination of President Laurent Kabila, who was shot by a bodyguard in the presidential palace.

2006: The Brazilian commander of UN peacekeepers in Haiti is found dead after shooting himself in the head — a blow to the 9,000-strong force and efforts to restore democracy in Haiti.

2008: Australia battles fires and flooding after days of summer heat and storms. The flooding is some of the worst the country has seen in decades.

2009: Russia shuts off all its gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine.

Today’s Birthdays

James Harrington, English political author (1611-1677); Robert Anderson, Scottish author (1750-1830); Zora Neale Hurston, American writer (1903-1960); Jean-Pierre Rampal, French flutist (1922-2000); David Caruso, US actor (1956-); Nicolas Cage, US actor (1964-); Katie Couric, news anchor (1957-); Adijah ‘Vybz Kartel’ Palmer, Jamaican dancehall artiste (1976-).