Today’s Highlight

1937: The animated cartoon character Daffy Duck made his debut in the Warner Bros. cartoon Porky’s Duck Hunt, directed by Tex Avery.

Other Events

1492: Spain agrees to finance Christopher Columbus’ voyage of discovery; Columbus signs a contract with a representative of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, giving him a commission to seek a westward ocean passage to Asia.

1521: Martin Luther appears before the Holy Roman Emperor at Worms, Germany, and is cross-examined about his thoughts on religious reform. Luther goes into hiding soon after.

1524: Giovanni da Verrazano discovers New York harbour.

1824: Russia and the US define respective rights in the Pacific Ocean and on northwest coast of America.

1895: China and Japan, by Treaty of Shimonoseki, recognise independence of Korea; China opens seven new ports and cedes Formosa (Taiwan), Port Arthur and the Liao Tung Peninsula to Japan.

1946: Last French troops leave Syria, which becomes independent.

1961: Some 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in an attempt to topple Fidel Castro, whose forces crushed the incursion by the third day.

1969: Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek is deposed.

1971: Egypt, Syria and Libya sign agreement to confederate.

1975: Phnom Penh falls to communist insurgents, ending Cambodia’s five-year war.

1992: Russian lawmakers refuse to approve arms control pact, setting up another confrontation with President Boris Yeltsin.

1993: A federal jury in Los Angeles convicts two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King; two other officers are acquitted.

1999: The Indian nationalist coalition government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee resigns after a vote of no confidence in parliament.

2000: Paul Kagame is selected president of Rwanda, the nation’s first Tutsi leader since independence in 1962 and a former rebel leader whose forces stopped the 1994 genocide.

2001: Jury selection begins in Brussels in the landmark trial of four Rwandans, including two Roman Catholic nuns, who faced charges of aiding and abetting the murder of Tutsis during the 1994 genocide.

Today’s Birthdays

Henry Vaughan, English poet (1622-1695); J Pierpont

Morgan, US financier (1837-1913); Isak Dinesen,

Danish writer (1885-1962); Thornton Wilder, US

novelist/playwright (1897-1975); Nikita Khrushchev,

Soviet statesman (1894-1971); Liz Phair, US singer

(1967-); Jennifer Garner, US actress (1972-); Victoria

Adams Beckham, British singer (1974-).

— AP