Today’s Highlight

1990: Vaclav Havel is elected president in Czechoslovakia’s first free elections in 44 years.

Other Events

1869: The suction vacuum cleaner is patented by Ives McGaffey of Chicago.

1883: France, by Convention of Marsa with Bey of Tunis, gains effective control of Tunisia.

1992: Delegates at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, approve new UN body to monitor compliance with environmental treaties.

1994: Two months after the start of the carnage in Rwanda, the UN Security Council approves the dispatch of 5,500 peacekeepers with a timid mandate to protect humanitarian aid but not to stop the slaughter.

1997: The Cobra militia of former President Denis Sassou-Nguesso takes control of the centre of Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.

1998: Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha dies suddenly of a heart attack, opening the way for democracy in the country.

2000: Britain’s defence attaché is killed in a road ambush in Greece. Europe’s most elusive urban guerrilla group, November 17, later claims responsibility for the assassination.

2001: Japan is shocked when a mentally unstable man stabs and kills eight children and wounds 15 teachers and students at a school in Ikeda.

2004: France and Germany, the sharpest critics of the Iraq war, back a revised UN resolution laying out the powers of Iraq’s new government — an important step toward gaining the approval of the UN Security Council.

2005: Ethiopian police open fire on stone-throwing protesters in the centre of the capital, killing 22 people and wounding hundreds as unrest mounts over the ruling party’s claim of victory in recent elections.

2011: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, increasingly cornered under a stunning upturn in NATO airstrikes, lashes back with renewed shelling of the western city of Misrata, killing 10 rebel fighters.

Today’s Birthday

Giovanni Cassini, Italian astronomer (1625-1712); Robert Schumann, German composer (1810-1856); Frank Lloyd Wright, US architect (1869-1959); Suharto, second Indonesian president (1921-2008); Joan Rivers, US comedian/talk show host (1933-); James Darren, US actor (1936-); Nancy Sinatra, pop singer (1940-); Sonia Braga, Brazilian actress (1950-); Kanye West, rapper (1977-); Julianna Margulies, US actress (1967-).