Today is the 135th day of 2014. There are 230 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1970: Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, two black students at Jackson State University in Mississippi, are killed when police open fire during student protests.

OTHER EVENTS

1536: Anne Boleyn, wife of King Henry VIII, and her brother, Lord Rochford, are tried and found guilty in England of adultery and incest.

1918: The first experimental airmail route in the US starts between Washington, Philadelphia and New York.

1923: Britain formally recognises Transjordan as independent state under Emir Abdullah.

1924: US Congress passes Bill instituting immigrant quotas based on nationality.

1930: Ellen Church, the first airline stewardess, goes on duty aboard a United Airlines flight between San Francisco and Cheyenne, Wyoming.

1940: The Netherlands surrenders to Germany in World War II; nylon stockings go on general sale for the first time in the United States.

1942: Gasoline rationing goes into effect in 17 US states, limiting sales to 11 litres (3 gallons) a week for non-essential vehicles.

1948: The state of Israel, one day old, is attacked by Egyptian planes and invaded by troops from Lebanon and Transjordan.

1955: Austrian state treaty is signed, ending 10 years of Allied occupation.

1957: Britain explodes its first thermonuclear bomb in central Pacific.

1988: Ethiopian Government declares state of emergency in war-torn northern provinces of Eritrea and Tigre; the Soviet Union begins the process of withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, more than eight years after Soviet forces had entered the country.

1989: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in Beijing declares an end to Sino-Soviet split.

1994: Aid officials report that the death toll may have reached 200,000 in Rwanda, where Hutus are on a campaign of genocide against minority Tutsis since April 6.

1998: To international condemnation, India declares itself a nuclear nation after five bomb tests the same week.

2001: World Health Organisation announces a plan to halt the spread of tuberculosis — which kills two million people each year — for less than half a billion dollars annually.

2002: A former Croatian Serb rebel leader Milan Martic and an ex-Yugoslav army officer General Mile Mrksic turned themselves in to the UN war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands.

2005: Insisting on obedience and missionary zeal, Pope Benedict XVI gives his church new priests in an elaborate ceremony in St Peter’s Basilica, where nearly half of those ordained are from Africa and Latin America.

2008: Myanmar Government says military-backed constitution has been overwhelmingly approved by voters — a claim that has come under fire for being held while the country responds to a massive cyclone that has killed tens of thousands of people.

2009: President Barack Obama says he would reform and retain the military tribunals he once reviled for Guantanamo Bay detainees, jeopardising his timetable for closing the naval prison in Cuba by January 2010.

2010: A 16-year-old Australian who braved boat knockdowns and seven months of solitude on a sail around the world sets foot on dry land outside the Sydney Opera House. Jessica Watson becomes the youngest person to sail around the globe solo, non-stop and unassisted.

2012: Socialist Francois Hollande assumes France’s presidency, inheriting a country fearful for its financial future and jetting off immediately to Berlin to tackle his most pressing problem: Europe’s debt crisis.

2013: The Vatican orders a disgraced Scottish cardinal to leave Scotland for several months to pay and atone for sexual misconduct, issuing a rate public sanction against a ‘prince of the church’ and the first such punishment meted out by Pope Francis.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

William Lamb, British statesman (1779-1852); Pierre Curie, French scientist (1859-1906); James Mason, British-born actor (1909- 1984); Jasper Johns, US artist (1930- ); Trini Lopez, singer (1937- ); Brian Eno, British composer and producer (1948- ); Mike Oldfield, British composer (1953- )

— AP