Today is the 30th day of 2012. There are 336 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

1948: Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated by a Hindu nationalist in New Delhi, India.

Other Events

1641: Portuguese surrender Malacca in Malaya to the Dutch.

1648: Peace between Spain and the Netherlands is signed at Muenster.

1649: England’s King Charles I is beheaded.

1781: The US Articles of the Confederation, a forerunner of the Constitution, are adopted by Maryland, the last of the original 13 colonies to do so.

1788: Charles Edward Stuart, young pretender to British throne, dies in Rome.

1835: Demented painter Richard Lawrence tries to assassinate U.S. President Andrew Jackson.

1889: Austria’s Crown Prince Rudolf and his lover Baroness Mary Vetsera, 18, are found dead in a possible suicide pact at the Mayerling hunting lodge outside Vienna.

1902: Britain signs treaty with Japan providing for independence of China and Korea.

1933: Adolf Hitler is named chancellor of Germany.

1943: Soviets destroy German army southwest of Stalingrad in World War II.

1957: United Nations calls on South Africa to reconsider its apartheid policy.

1962: UN General Assembly adopts Asian-African resolution calling on Portugal to halt repressive measures against Angola.

1964: South Vietnamese General Nguyen Khanh seizes power in coup in Saigon; the U.S. launches Ranger 6, an unmanned spacecraft carrying television cameras to crash-land on the moon.

1968: The Tet Offensive begins as Communist forces launch surprise attacks against South Vietnamese provincial capitals.

1970: Two students are killed and more than 200 wounded as demonstrators storm presidential palace in Philippine capital of Manila.

1972: Thirteen Roman Catholic civil rights marchers are shot to death by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on what becomes known as “Bloody Sunday”.

1979: White Rhodesians approve new constitution to eventually give blacks control of the nation, now known as Zimbabwe; the civilian government of Iran announces it has decided to allow Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was living in exile in France, to return.

1986: President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines pledges to relinquish power peacefully if he loses to Corazon Aquino in the February 7 election.

1990: Communist Party loses majority in Czech parliament, which it dominated for four decades.

1991: Iraqi forces attack allied positions in Saudi Arabia near Kuwaiti border, holding abandoned coastal city of Khafji for a time. Eleven US marines are killed, seven by friendly fire.

1992: US military announces it will halt or cut back operations at 83 additional military sites in Europe.

1994: The United States grants a limited visa to Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the Northern Irish political party that supports the outlawed Irish Republican Army.

1995: A car bomb explodes in Algiers, killing at least 20 people and injuring about 60 in the worst bombing during a three-year insurgency by Islamic militants.

1999: NATO authorises its secretary-general to launch military action against Yugoslavia if it does not negotiate an agreement for autonomy in Kosovo.

2000: In Berlin, Germany, hundreds of neo-Nazis demonstrate at the site of a planned memorial to Holocaust victims and march through the Brandenburg Gate where Nazi troops once held processions.

2002: The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland agrees to pay US$10 million to children sexually abused by clergy over the past few decades.

2003: Richard Reid, who in October 2002 pleaded guilty to attempting to bomb a trans-Atlantic flight, is sentenced by a court in Boston to life in prison.

2004: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announces that UN staffers can receive benefits for their gay or lesbian partners if their country recognises same-sex marriages or domestic partnerships.

2005: Iraqis in 14 countries stream into polling stations for their last chance to cast absentee ballots in Iraq’s first independent election in five decades, expressing hopes that the vote will bring peace and stability to their homeland.

2007: The United Nations’ first women-only peacekeeping contingent — made up of about 100 Indian policewomen — arrives in Liberia to join the UN’s 15,000-strong peacekeeping force in the West African country.

2008: The Australian government says it will issue its first formal apology to its indigenous people on February 13, a milestone that could ease tensions with a minority whose mixed-blood children were once taken away on the premise that their race was doomed.

2009: Waterford Crystal workers mount a sit-down protest after bankruptcy officials shut down their world-famous factory in Waterford, Ireland.

2010: China suspends military exchanges with the United States, threatens unprecedented sanctions against American defence companies and warns that cooperation would suffer after Washington announced $6.4 billion in planned arms sales to Taiwan.

2011: Hundreds of South Africans fill an historic church in the township of Soweto to pray for former president Nelson Mandela after his release from a hospital earlier this week where he was treated for an acute respiratory tract infection.

Today’s Birthdays:

Franklin D Roosevelt, US president (1882-1945); Gene Hackman, US actor (1930- ); Vanessa Redgrave, English actress (1937- ); Phil Collins, English pop singer (1951- ); Brett Butler, US actress/comedian (1958- ); Christian Bale, English actor (1974- ); Jody Watley, US singer (1959-).