Today is the 142nd day of 2014 There are 223 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1868: The Great Train Robbery takes place near Marshfield, Indiana, as seven members of the Reno gang make off with US$96,000 in cash, gold and bonds.

OTHER EVENTS

1761: The first life insurance policy in the United States is issued, in Philadelphia.

1819: The American steamboat Savannah makes its first trans-Atlantic crossing.

1833: A new constitution in Chile gives greater power to the president and establishes Roman Catholicism as state religion.

1822: United States and Korea sign treaty of peace and friendship.

1840: Transportation of British convicts to New South Wales, Australia, officially ends.

1867: Canada becomes the first dominion of the British Empire, gaining a Parliament, cabinet and large measure of independence.

1939: Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini sign “Pact of Steel,” a 10-year political and military alliance.

1969: The lunar module of Apollo 10 separates from the command module and flies to within 14 kilometres (nine miles) of the moon’s surface in a dress rehearsal for the first lunar landing.

1972: Richard Nixon becomes the first US president to visit Russia, where he signs a pact with Leonid Brezhnev to reduce the risk of military confrontation; the island nation of Ceylon becomes the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka with the adoption of a new constitution.

1975: White-ruled African nation of Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe, is expelled from Olympics because of its racial policies.

1989: India successfully test fires its first medium-range surface-to-surface missile.

1990: After years of conflict, pro-Western North Yemen and pro-Soviet South Yemen merge to form the Republic of Yemen.

1991: India’s Congress Party offers party leadership to Sonia Gandhi, widow of assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, but she refuses, only to take it up in 1998.

1993: Cambodians vote in first multiparty elections in 21 years.

1997: Russian President Boris Yeltsin fires his defence minister and several top generals for their resistance to budget cuts and military restructuring.

1998: Voters in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland vote overwhelmingly for a peace agreement to end 20 years of sectarian strife.

2001: In Afghanistan, the ruling Taliban militia announces a law requiring Hindus to wear identity labels to distinguish them from Muslims. The measure also requires Hindu women to be veiled for the first time.

2009: Germany marks the 60th birthday of the post-World War II federal republic under which the country has become a stable and respected democracy with global political and economic clout.

2010: President Barack Obama says the US must shape a world order as reliant on the force of diplomacy as on the might of its military to lead, outlining a foreign policy vision that repudiates the approach forged by his predecessor, George W Bush.

2011: Armed supporters of Yemen’s leader trap US, European and Arab ambassadors at a diplomatic mission in new turmoil that sweeps across the capital as the president refuses to sign an agreement calling for him to step down in 30 days.

2012: Opening a new, entrepreneurial era in space flight, a ship built by a billionaire businessman speeds toward the International Space Station with a load of groceries and other supplies after a spectacular middle-of-the-night blast-off.

2013: Two men with butcher knives hack another man to death near a military barracks in London before police wound them in a shoot-out in what authorities say appears to be an act of terrorism, possibly motivated by radical Islam.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Richard Wagner, German composer (1813-1883); Mary Cassatt, US impressionist painter (1844-1926); Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, English author (1859-1930); Daniel F Malan, South African statesman, instituted apartheid (1874-1959); Sir Laurence Olivier, English actor (1907-1989); Bernard Shaw, US journalist (1940- ); Naomi Campbell, British model (1970- ); Bernie Taupin, songwriter (1950- )