Today’s Highlight

1983: The Caribbean islands of St Kitts and Nevis become independent of Britain.

Other Events

1944: Soviet Union and Finland sign peace treaty in Moscow, ending three-year war.

1955: Argentina’s President Juan Peron is ousted after revolts by the army and navy.

1959: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, on a visit to Los Angeles, reportedly becomes furious when informed that he can’t visit Disneyland for security reasons.

1962: China attacks Indian forces, seizing part of Kashmir after a three-week war.

1968: Czech Foreign Minister Jiri Hajek resigns under Soviet pressure.

1972: Israeli diplomat is killed and another injured when letter bomb explodes at Israeli embassy in London.

1978: Egypt’s Cabinet unanimously approves President Anwar Sadat’s Camp David agreement to sign a peace treaty with Israel within three months.

1984: China and Great Britain announce their agreement to transfer Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997.

1985: An earthquake under the Pacific coast shakes Mexico City, killing 10,000 people.

1992: Dr Nigel Cox is convicted of attempted murder in Great Britain. He administered a fatal injection to an elderly patient who asked him to help her die.

1994: US troops peacefully enter Haiti to enforce the return of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

1999: Foreign peacekeeping troops begin pouring into East Timor, experiencing no resistance from Indonesian troops or anti-independence militias.

2001: Islamic clerics urge terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden to leave Afghanistan voluntarily, but set no deadline for him. The US threatens to attack the Taliban, if they don’t turn him in.

2003: Venezuela suspends oil shipments to the Dominican Republic because of a plot being hatched there to overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Venezuela had sold about 110,000 barrels of oil a day to the Dominican Republic, making up 70 per cent of that country’s oil supply.

2004: Hu Jintao becomes the undisputed leader of China as the country completes its first orderly transfer of power in the communist era with the departure of former President Jiang Zemin.

2006: Thailand’s army commander stages a coup, ousting Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra while he is in New York, circling his offices with tanks, declaring martial law and revoking the constitution.

2007: Anti-Syrian lawmaker Antoine Ghanem, who had returned to Lebanon two days earlier from refuge abroad, is killed along with six other people by a bomb that rocks a Christian neighbourhood of Beirut.

2008: China’s food safety crisis widens after the industrial chemical melamine is found in milk produced by three of the country’s leading dairy companies.

2009: Russia says it will scrap a plan to deploy missiles near Poland since Washington has dumped a planned missile shield in Eastern Europe.

Today’s Birthdays:

France’s King Henry III (1551-1589); Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre, French astronomer (1749-1822); George Cadbury, British chocolate manufacturer (1839-1922); William Golding, British writer and Nobel laureate (1911-1993); Jeremy Irons, English actor (1948-); Twiggy Lawson, British actress/former model (1949-); Trisha Yearwood, US country singer (1964-); Jimmy Fallon, US actor/comedian (1974-).