Today is the 276th day of 2012. There are 90 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

1967: Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as an associate justice of the US Supreme Court, becoming the first African-American appointed to the highest US court.

Other Events

1870: Rome becomes the capital of Italy.

1889: First Pan American Conference is held in Washington.

1918: King Faisal I enters Damascus to set up an independent Arab state.

1919: US President Woodrow Wilson suffers a stroke; leaving him partially paralyzed.

1924: League of Nations adopts Geneva Protocol for peaceful settlement of international disputes.

1934: Royal Indian Navy is formed.

1940: HMS Empress of Britain, carrying child war refugees to Canada, is sunk during World War II.

1941: German army launches all-out drive against Moscow in World War II.

1944: Nazi troops crush the two-month-old Warsaw Uprising, during which 250,000 people are killed.

1950: The comic strip Peanuts, created by Charles M Schulz, is first published in nine US newspapers.

1958: The former French colony of Guinea in West Africa proclaims its independence.

1962: Egypt sends troops to Yemen to support republicans against Saudi-backed royalists.

1972: Denmark’s entrance into the European Economic Community is approved by almost two-thirds of voters in a referendum.

1977: Israel rejects joint US-Soviet declaration on aims of proposed Middle East peace conference.

1988: Pakistan’s Supreme Court orders that planned elections in November be open to all political parties.

1991: Haiti’s military chief advises ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to remain in exile.

1992: The UN Security Council passes a resolution to seize Iraqi oil assets currently frozen abroad. The impounded assets, valued between $500 million to $1 billion, are to help pay for UN disarmament, relief efforts and compensation for victims of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

1993: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan meet in Washington, DC with US President Bill Clinton to normalise economic relations between their countries.

1994: US troops in Haiti raid weapons caches in Port-au-Prince, cracking down on violence initiated in previous days by paramilitary units linked to Haiti’s military-led de facto government.

1995: Director of Russia’s famed Kirov Ballet, Anatoly Malkov, is arrested for corruption and bribery running into millions of dollars. He later resigns.

1996: A Peruvian plane slams into the Pacific after its navigation system fails. All 70 passengers and crew are killed.

1997: Canada recalls ambassador to Israel to protest use of forged Canadian passports by suspected Israel agents.

1998: A popular Mongolian government minister, Sanjaasuregiin Zorig, is slain. He was seen as a compromise candidate to end a protracted political crisis in Mongolia.

2000: Truck and taxi drivers blockade roads and bridges throughout Yugoslavia to open a protest designed to drive President Slobodan Milosevic from office.

2002: US President George W Bush reaches an agreement with the leaders of the US House of Representatives on a resolution authorising military action against Iraq.

2003: A US District Court judge declines to dismiss all charges against September 11 terrorist suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, and instead bars government prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in his case.

2006: A gunman storms an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, killing five girls before committing suicide. It is the third deadly US school shooting in less than a week.

2007: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il welcomes South Korea’s president to Pyongyang for the start of the second-ever summit between the divided Koreas since World War II.

2009: In a vote of high drama, the bustling Brazilian carnival city of Rio de Janeiro gets the 2016 Olympics, a first for South America.

2010: Pakistan keeps a vital border crossing closed to US and NATO supply trucks for a third day, a sign that Islamabad’s desire to avoid a domestic backlash over a NATO incursion that killed three Pakistani troops is — for now — outweighing its desire to stay on good terms with America.

2011: Syrian dissidents formally establish a broad-based national council designed to overthrow President Bashar Assad’s regime, which they accused of pushing the country to the brink of civil war. Syrians take to the streets in celebration, singing and dancing.

Today’s Birthdays

Richard III, king of England (1452-1485); Paul von Hindenburg, German president (1847-1934); Ferdinand Foch, French soldier (1851-1929); Mohandas K (Mahatma) Gandhi, Indian statesman-reformer (1869-1948); Groucho Marx, US comedian (1895-1977); Graham Greene, British writer (1904-1991), Don McLean, US singer (1945-), Sting, British singer (1951-).

— AP