Today is the 356th day of 2012. There are 10 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

1620: Pilgrims go ashore from the Mayflower at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the US.

Other Events

1817: Governor Lachlan Macquarie formally adopts the name “Australia” for the British colony.

1898: Radium is discovered by scientists Pierre and Marie Curie.

1934: Bolivia’s President Daniel Salamanca is overthrown in military coup.

1960: Saudi Arabia’s Premier Emir Faisal resigns, and King Saud takes over government.

1967: Louis Washkansky, the first man to undergo a heart transplant, dies in Cape Town, South Africa, 18 days after surgery.

1971: Austrian diplomat Kurt Waldheim is chosen as secretary-general of the UN.

1972: East and West Germany formally sign a treaty ending more than two decades of official enmity.

1979: A peace agreement is signed, ending the seven-year Rhodesian guerrilla war and the 15-year rebellion against the British crown.

1988: A Pan Am jet explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people in the air and on the ground. Libyan agents are tried for the bombing.

1990: Albanian government orders removal of all statues and symbols bearing Josef Stalin’s name.

1993: Russian President Boris Yeltsin dissolves the powerful Security Ministry, saying the successor to the KGB secret police failed to warn him of dangerous political currents in Russia.

1995: At least 75 people are killed and 76 injured in Badrshein, Egypt, when a train slams into the Cairo-to-Luxor express.

1997: Nigeria’s deputy head of state, Lieutenant General Oladipo Diya, and 11 others are arrested and accused of plotting to overthrow General Sani Abacha.

1998: After a quick trial, Chinese dissidents Xu Wenli and Wang Youcai are sentenced to more than a decade behind bars for trying to register the China Democracy Party.

2003: The Sudanese government and rebel group Sudan People’s Liberation Army reach a tentative deal to evenly divide the country’s oil wealth as part of negotiations to end its 20-year-old civil war.

2004: Tens of thousands of Filipinos fill Manila’s streets for the funeral of Fernando Poe Jr, the actor-turned-presidential candidate who came to symbolise the aspirations of the country’s poor.

2005: Britain’s most famous gay couple — Sir Elton John and Canadian filmmaker David Furnish — tie the knot in a much-anticipated ceremony, capping the first week of legalised civil unions for same-sex couples in the United Kingdom.

2008: Poland’s president celebrates the start of Hanukkah by visiting Warsaw’s main synagogue, a gesture the city’s Jewish community greets as a historic step in its revival.

2009: A huge funeral procession for Iran’s most senior dissident cleric, Grand Ayatolloh Hossein Ali Montazeri, becomes a show of defiance against the country’s rulers as mourners flashed green protest colours and chanted against the Islamic leadership in Iran’s holy city of Qom.

2010: Iraq seats a freely elected government after nine months of haggling, bringing together the main ethnic and religious groups in a fragile balance that could make it difficult to rebuild a nation devastated by war as American troops prepare for their final withdrawal.

Today’s Birthdays

Benjamin Disraeli, English statesman-author (1804-1881); Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan (1876-1948); Joseph Stalin, Soviet leader (1879-1953); Kurt Waldheim, former Austrian president and UN secretary-general (1918-2007); Kel Nagle, Australian champion golfer (1920-); Alicia Alonso, Cuban-born ballerina (1921-); Jane Fonda, US actress (1937-); Samuel L Jackson, US actor (1948-); Julie Delpy, French actress/director (1969-).

— AP