Today is the 5th day of 2012. There are 361 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

1991: Cuba and the Soviet Union sign agreement ending trade at easy terms and artificially low prices.

Other Events

1477: Swiss defeat and kill Charles the Bold of Burgundy at Battle of Nancy.

1762: Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia dies, is succeeded by Peter III.

1781: A British naval expedition led by Benedict Arnold burns in Richmond, Virginia.

1809: Britain and Turkey conclude Treaty of Dardanelles.

1869: Joint Argentine, Brazilian and Uruguayan forces take Asuncion, Paraguay, during Triple Alliance war.

1895: Discovery of X-rays is announced by German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen; French Captain Alfred Dreyfus, convicted of treason, is publicly stripped of his rank. He is ultimately vindicated.

1919: Communist Spartacist revolt begins in Berlin; Nationalist Socialist Party formed in Germany.

1925: Nellie T Ross succeeds her late husband as governor of Wyoming, becoming the first female governor in U.S. history.

1929: King Alexander I suppresses Yugoslav Constitution and establishes dictatorship.

1949: In his State of the Union address, US President Harry Truman labels his administration the “Fair Deal”.

1964: Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Benedictos of Jerusalem meet in Holy Land on Mount of Olives — the first meeting in five centuries between a Roman Catholic pope and Eastern Orthodox Church patriarch. It is also the first papal pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

1972: US President Richard Nixon orders the development of the space shuttle.

1987: Cheering students in China burn hundreds of copies of newspaper Peking Daily to protest government publication’s harsh criticism of student demonstrations.

1992: Rebels pound Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s stronghold with rockets and machine guns and he offers to hold a referendum on their demand that he resign.

1993: The tanker Braer runs aground on the Shetland Islands and spills 26 million gallons (98.42 million liters) of oil in the next few days.

1994: Easing fears of a nuclear arms race in northeast Asia, the Clinton administration says North Korea has agreed to allow renewed international inspection of seven nuclear sites.

1995: With oil tanks ablaze on the horizon, troops move in to quell a peasant uprising in southern Colombia that reportedly leaves one child dead and costs millions of dollars in oil revenue.

1996: Yehiya Ayyash, the suspected mastermind of a string of suicide attacks that killed dozens of Israelis, dies when a booby-trapped mobile phone blows up in his hands in the Gaza Strip.

1997: French trains are diverted to pick up stranded skiers, and German rail stations are converted into homeless shelters as the death toll from Europe’s longest cold spell in a decade passes 230.

1998: Arab interior ministers give preliminary approval to an accord to combat terrorism in the Middle East.

2000: Two US medical firms and a Dutch organisation offer to pay up to $2.36 million to Dutch hemophiliacs infected with the AIDS virus during blood transfusions in the 1980s. US Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner rules that six-year-old Elian Gonzalez “belongs with his father” and must be returned to Cuba. Gonzalez was rescued after his mother died when their US-bound boat capsized off Florida and was living with Miami relatives.

2003: Two Palestinians carry out a coordinated suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, the Israeli capital, killing themselves, 22 others and injuring more than 100. The attack marks the first suicide bombing in Israel since November 2002.

2005: The US military command that oversees the detention mission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, opens an internal investigation into allegations of prisoner abuse, stemming from recently released FBI documents.

2006: A suicide bomb explodes in a crowded market in an Afghan town just a few hundred yards (meters) from where the US ambassador is meeting with local leaders. Ten Afghans are killed and 50 wounded in the deadliest of a recent series of attacks.

2007: In a wave of Palestinian fighting, assailants outside a Gaza mosque gun down a Muslim preacher known for his anti-Hamas views, and thousands march through Gaza carrying the bodies of seven slain Fatah men.

2008: Indonesia’s former dictator Suharto, 86, is put on a dialysis machine in critical condition a day after being admitted to Pertamina Hospital. He dies Jan 27 of multiple organ failure after more than three weeks on life support

2009: Russia’s cutoff of natural gas to Ukraine forces several European countries to dip into reserves, with Moscow tightening the tap even further.

2010: Counterterrorism officials in the Middle East say the suspected Jordanian double agent who killed eight people on a CIA base in Afghanistan was recruited by his country’s intelligence agency after it threw him in jail to coerce him into helping them track down al-Qaida’s No 2 leader.

2011: Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a fierce opponent of the United States and head of Iraq’s most feared militia, comes home after nearly four years in self-imposed exile in Iran, welcomed by hundreds of cheering supporters in a return that solidifies the rise of his movement.

Today’s Birthdays

Konrad Adenauer, German statesman (1876-1967); Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistani prime minister (1928-1979); Friedrich Duerrenmatt,

Swiss playwright and novelist (1921-1990); Robert Duvall, US actor (1931-); Umberto Eco, Italian writer (1932-); Charlie Rose, US talk show

host/journalist (1942-); Diane Keaton, US actress (1946-).