TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1940: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini hold a meeting at the Brenner Pass during which the Italian dictator agrees to join in Germany’s war against France and Britain.

OTHER EVENTS

1554: Britain’s Princess Elizabeth is sent to the Tower of London for suspected complicity in Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion.

1766: Great Britain repeals the Stamp Act, after Americans decried that taxation without representation was tyranny.

1813: Hamburg, Germany, is occupied by Russians following patriotic outbreak in city against French.

1848: Revolution breaks out in Milan against Austrian rule, and Joseph Radetzky’s forces abandon city.

1909: Einar Dessau of Denmark uses a shortwave transmitter to converse with a government radio post about 10 kilometres (6 miles) away in what is believed to have been the first broadcast by a “ham” operator.

1922: Mahatma Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison in India for civil disobedience.

1931: Schick Inc markets the first electric razor in the United States.

1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is formed.

1959: US President Dwight Eisenhower signs the Hawaii statehood bill.

1965: The first spacewalk takes place as Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov leaves his Voskhod 2 capsule and remains outside the spacecraft for 20 minutes, secured by a tether.

1969: US President Richard Nixon orders secret bombing of Cambodia; US and Soviet Union propose international treaty to ban nuclear weapons from ocean floor.

1990: East German voters signal that they want unification with West Germany as soon as possible, giving the Conservative alliance 48 per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections.

1992: An explosion destroys the Israeli Embassy near downtown Buenos Aires, killing 29 people and wounding 252.

1999: The Kosovo peace talks collapse after ethnic Albanian delegates unilaterally sign a peace accord that defiant Serbs reject.

2000: Aid arrives in Mozambique, where flooding left as many as 700 people dead and destroyed the homes or livelihood of another 2 million. Taiwan ends more than a half-century of Nationalist Party rule, electing an opposition leader, Chen Shui-bian.

2001: In Paris, Socialists win municipal elections, ending nearly a century of unbroken rule by the right.

2004: Poland’s President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a key US ally in Iraq, says that Poland was “misled” about whether Saddam Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction and was considering withdrawing its troops from Iraq several months earlier than envisaged.

2005: More than 2,000 Shiites march through Baghdad to protest the alleged involvement of a Jordanian in a suicide attack one month earlier that killed 125 people.

2006: Thousands of anti-war protesters take to the streets around the world, marking the third anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq with demands that coalition troops leave immediately.

2009: Austrian incest father, Josef Fritzl, abruptly pleads guilty to all charges against him, a surprising twist amid disclosures that the daughter he imprisoned for 24 years in a dungeon where she bore him seven children secretly sat in on the trial.