Today is the 111th day of 2013. There are 254 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1966: His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia gets a tumultuous welcome in Jamaica where he is revered by the Rastafarian community.

OTHER EVENTS

1856: Australia adopts eight-hour working day.

1898: US recognises independence of Cuba.

1928: France’s Aristide Briand submits his draft treaty for outlawing war. It is later signed as the Kellogg-Briand Pact by most of the world’s countries.

1947: Crown Prince Frederik is acclaimed King Frederik IX of Denmark by thousands of Danes on parliament square.

1960: Brazil moves its capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia, a modern city built from scratch on the central high plains.

1967: Army officers led by Col Georgios Papadopoulos seize power in Greece. The junta rules the country for seven years.

1972: Two US Apollo 16 astronauts spend seven hours exploring highlands of the Moon.

1975: South Vietnam’s President Nguyen van Thieu resigns, denounces the US as untrustworthy, and names successor to seek negotiations with Communist forces sweeping across country.

1977: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto assumes emergency powers and imposes martial law on three major cities in crackdown on opponents trying to force his resignation; the musical Annie opens on Broadway.

1980: Rosie Ruiz is the first woman to cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon, but she is disqualified when officials discover she jumped into the race about a mile (1.6 kilometres) from the finish.

1989: Thousands of students, shouting for democracy and human rights, march from campuses to converge on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.

1990: Moscow expands its energy embargo of Lithuania to include shipments of food, metal and industrial parts, in effort to get the republic to revoke declaration of independence.

1997: The first Chinese Army soldiers march into Hong Kong in preparation for the handover of the British colony to China on July 1.

1998: South Korea drops efforts to get compensation from Japan for women held as sex slaves during World War II, and says it will pay surviving women.

2006: Haitians vote in a legislative election billed as the final step in the often-delayed process to bring back democracy to the poorest nation in the Americas.

2007: Thousands of Bhutanese practice for democracy in mock elections, lining up at polling stations to select dummy political parties in the latest step toward shedding nearly 100 years of absolute monarchy in the secluded Himalayan country.

2009: European researchers say they not only found the smallest planet ever, Gliese 5810 e, but also realize that a neighboring planet discovered earlier, Gliese 581 d, was in the prime habital zone for potential life.

2010: An explosion rocks a BP offshore oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and eventually leading to the biggest oil spill in US history.

2011: Japan seals off a wide area around a radiation-spewing nuclear power plant to prevent tens of thousands of residents from sneaking back to the homes they quickly evacuated, some with little more than a credit card and the clothes on their backs.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Charlotte Bronte, English novelist (1816-1855); Anthony Quinn, Mexican-born actor (1915-2001); Queen Elizabeth II of England (1926-); Elaine May, US entertainer-writer (1932-); Omotoso Kole, Nigerian writer (1943-); Iggy Pop, English punk singer (1947-); Patti LuPone, US actress/singer (1949-); James McAvoy, actor (1979-); Michael Franti, US singer/rapper (1966-).

— AP/Observer