TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1994: Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the leg by an assailant in Detroit. Four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan’s skating rival, Tonya Harding, are sentenced to prison.

OTHER EVENTS

1492: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ride victoriously into Granada after their armies defeat Boabdil, the last Muslim ruler of Spain, completing the Christian reconquest of Spain.

1540: England’s King Henry VIII weds fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. The marriage ends six months later when she agrees to an annulment.

1810: Turkey agrees to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and Kuban with the enactment of the Treaty of Constantinople.

1818: Dominions of Holkar in India are annexed with Rajput states and come under British protection.

1838: Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates his telegraph, in Morristown, New Jersey.

1839: British forces capture Aden, Yemen.

1912: New Mexico becomes 47th U.S. state.

1925: Top South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae-jung, a three-time presidential candidate, is born.

1941: US President Franklin D Roosevelt defines American goal of “Four Freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

1942: The Pan American Airways Pacific Clipper arrives in New York after making the first round-the-world trip by a commercial airplane.

1950: Britain recognises the Communist government of China.

1963: Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi launches his “white revolution,” including redistributing land to peasants and giving women the vote.

1989: Soviet Union calls downing of two Libyan aircraft by the United States “absolutely unfounded”.

1990: Polish Communist leaders vote to disband their party and form a new leftist party under a different name.

1992: Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia and his supporters shoot their way out of their stronghold and speed away.

1997: After a week of torrential rain in south-eastern Brazil, at least 67 people are killed and more than 32,000 are left homeless.

1998: Fifty-one people die in a train crash in Karna, India.

2000: Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the Holy Land.

2001: The Palestinians oppose drafting a “declaration of principles” that would be based on US President Bill Clinton’s peace proposals, saying they “will not accept any kind of pressure” that would short-circuit their legitimate rights.

2002: US Special Forces and allied Afghan fighters return empty-handed from a four-day manhunt aimed at extracting Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar from his alleged mountain hideout in southern Afghanistan.

2003: The Tamil Tigers rebel group and the Sri Lankan government hold a round of peace talks, making modest progress toward reconciliation after a 19-year-old civil war, but reaching no significant breakthroughs.

2004: Ugandan church leaders tell American supporters of gay bishop Gene Robinson they are not welcome at the consecration of the new leader of Uganda’s Anglicans, Bishop Henry Orombi.

2005: A baby boy is declared China’s 1.3 billionth citizen in a blaze of publicity to promote the government’s controversial “one child” birth limits.

2006: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatens to seize control of coffee-producing companies, or even nationalise them, if they refuse to sell the product at government-controlled prices.

2009: The Indian navy agrees to buy eight reconnaissance and anti-submarine planes from Boeing Co in a $2.1-billion deal that signals the developing nation’s drive to upgrade its military hardware, Boeing announces.

2010: A clash off Antarctica between a Japanese whaler and a boat from a protest group partly bankrolled by former American game show host Bob Barker leaves the anti-whaling vessel badly damaged and each side accusing the other of life-threatening behaviour.

2012: The political tensions between the US and Iran over transit in and around the Persian Gulf give way to photos of rescued Iranian fisherman happily wearing American Navy ball caps.

–AP