Today is the 288th day of 2011. There are 77 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

1583: The Gregorian calendar goes into effect in the Papal States by decree of Pope Gregory XIII and is soon adopted in other countries.

Other Events

1945: The former premier of Vichy France, Pierre Laval, is executed.

1946: Former head of the Nazi air force, Hermann Goering, sentenced to death as a war criminal, commits suicide by poison hours before his scheduled execution.

1951: The situation comedy I Love Lucy starring Lucille Ball premieres in the US on CBS television.

1964: Soviet leader Nikita S Khrushchev is removed from office and replaced as premier by Alexei N Kosygin and as Communist Party secretary by Leonid I Brezhnev.

1987: Fiji’s governor general resigns, ending a decade of allegiance by the South Pacific island to the British crown.

1989: Thousands of blacks hold “victory marches” in South Africa to celebrate the imminent release of eight political prisoners, including Walter Sisulu.

1990: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded Nobel Peace Prize.

1994: Democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returns to Haiti after US troops landed there in September.

1999: Pakistan’s army chief, Gen Pervez Musharraf, declares a state of emergency and names himself chief executive, two days after he and his troops ousted the democratically elected government in a bloodless coup.

2006: Thousands of people are evacuated from their homes in the central German city of Hanover as experts dispose of three freshly unearthed World War II bombs.

2007: European Union foreign ministers give their final approval to deploy a 3,000-strong EU peacekeeping force for one year to help refugees and displaced people living along the borders of Sudan’s Darfur region with Chad and the Central African Republic.

2008: Thousands of Christians from around the world march in a colourful holiday parade in Jerusalem to commemorate a Jewish holiday and show their support for Israel.

2010: Workers hug, cheer and set off fireworks as the huge drill breaks through the last stretch of rock deep in the Swiss Alps. There was delight at the end of the tunnel — the world’s longest — when it is completed.

Today’s Birthdays

Virgil, Roman poet (70 BC-19 BC); Evangelista Torricelli, Italian inventor of barometer (1608-1647); Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844-1900); P(elham) G(renville) Wodehouse, British-American writer (1881-1975); Richard Carpenter, US singer/drummer (1946-); Penny Marshall, US actress/director (1943-).