Highlights

1992: UN Security Council urges Libya to surrender two agents indicted by United States in bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Other Events

1606: England’s Parliament imposes severe penalties against Roman Catholics.

1793: France’s King Louis XVI, condemned for treason, is executed on the guillotine.

1908: New York City women are prohibited from smoking in public.

1919: Sinn Fein Congress in Dublin, Ireland, adopts Declaration of Independence.

1924: First Nationalist Chinese Congress at Canton admits Communists and welcomes Russian advisers.

1950: A federal jury in New York City finds former State Department official Alger Hiss guilty of perjury.

1954: The first atomic submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched at Groton, Connecticut.

1970: France’s sale of Mirage jets to Libya is announced; Iraq’s government foils coup and promptly executes 12 men.

1974: United States rejects South Vietnam’s request for naval support in fighting with Chinese for Paracel Islands.

1976: The supersonic Concorde jet is put into service by Britain and France.

1995: Pope John Paul II ends his 11-day Asia tour in Sri Lanka on a note of controversy, when Buddhist leaders boycott a meeting with him to protest his views of their religion.

1996: Winning 88 per cent of the vote, Yasser Arafat emerges from the first Palestinian election with a mandate to lead his people to independence.

1999: Raul Salinas de Gortari, the brother of the ex-president of Mexico, is sentenced to 50 years in prison for having a political opponent murdered.

2002: Israeli troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships seize Palestinian-controlled West Bank city of Tulkarem, occupying the entire city and imposing a 24-hour curfew on its 45,000 residents; international donors at a conference in Tokyo, Japan, pledge more than $4.5 billion in aid to Afghanistan over the next five years.

2005: A European probe to Saturn’s largest moon finds a freezing, primitive but active world that, like Earth, seems to be doused with rains that gouge out rivers, erode rocks and form pools.

2009: The US Senate confirms Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state.

2010: A bitterly divided US Supreme Court vastly increases the power of big business and labour unions to influence government decisions by freeing them to spend their millions directly to sway elections for president and Congress, reversing a century-long trend to limit their role.

Today’s Birthdays:

John Fitch, US naval engineer (1743-1798); Leo Delibes, French composer (1836-1891); Telly Savalas, US actor (1924-1994); Benny Hill, English

comedian (1925-1992); Placido Domingo, Spanish tenor (1941–); Geena Davis, US actress (1956–); Charlotte Ross, US actress (1968–).