Today is the 216th day of 2014. There are 149 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1999: Letters given to US President Bill Clinton by Russian President Boris Yeltsin are made public, including one written by Jacqueline Kennedy days after the assassination of her husband, President John F Kennedy, asking Soviet leaders to maintain peaceful US relations.

OTHER EVENTS

1578: Portugal’s King Sebastian is killed when his forces, on a crusade to Morocco, are overwhelmed by a larger Moroccan army.

1892: Andrew and Abby Borden are axed to death in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Lizzie Borden, Andrew’s daughter from a previous marriage, is accused of the killings and acquitted.

1907: French fleet bombards Casablanca, north-west Morocco, following anti-foreign outbreaks.

1914: Germany invades Belgium, opening World War I fighting; Britain declares war on Germany; United States declares its neutrality.

1916: Denmark sells Danish Virgin Islands to United States for $25 million.

1944: Nazi police capture 14-year-old Anne Frank and seven other Jews in hiding places in Amsterdam during World War II.

1950: Moscow negotiates a trade and barter agreement with Iran, two days after large quantities of American machinery financed by loans arrive to start improvement projects meant to alleviate unemployment in Iran.

1958: The Greek Cypriots EOKA Underground declare a military truce in Cyprus with Turkish Cypriots and British security forces. They vow to continue fighting if provoked.

1964: The bodies of missing US civil rights workers Michael H Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James E Chaney are found buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi.

1968: Israeli planes carry out a heavy raid on Arab guerrilla bases 10 miles (16 kilometres) inside Jordan, where 23 civilians and 5 soldiers are killed.

1971: US Apollo 15 spacecraft heads back to Earth after a six-day mission exploring the Moon.

1977: US President Jimmy Carter signs a measure establishing the Department of Energy.

1982: Three days after the UN Security Council demanded a ceasefire in the Lebanon war, Israeli tanks roll across the “green line” into west Beirut in an attempt to drive out the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Seventy people are killed.

1986: Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reluctantly offers to impose limited sanctions against South Africa.

1990: Twelve nations of European Community ban oil imports, embargo arms and suspend most trade with Iraq after invasion of Kuwait.

1993: Japan’s Cabinet resigns, ending 38 years of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party.

1994: Yugoslavia withdraws support for Bosnia’s Serbs, sealing the 300-mile (483-kilometre) border between Yugoslavia and Serb-held Bosnia and backing out of a war it bankrolled for more than two years at the expense of its own economy.

1995: Croatia launches a massive attack on breakaway Serbs, bombarding rebel towns and shelling UN peacekeepers.

1997: Six people are shot dead in restaurant in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, apparently part of a drug war.

1998: Taliban forces take the town of Saripul in Afghanistan, paving the way for an attack on opposition stronghold Mazar-e-Sharif.

2000: Queen Mother Elizabeth celebrates her 100th birthday as thousands line the roads of London to cheer her. Her popularity stems in part from her activities during World War II, traveling with her husband, King George VI, and visiting and sympathising with their subjects.

2002: In an electoral tie, Bolivia’s Congress selects Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, a wealthy mining magnate and former president, as the country’s next president.

2005: A US Army interrogator is demoted but spared a prison sentence for roughing up an Afghan prisoner who later died.

2007: NASA launches The Phoenix Mars Lander, a robotic dirt and ice digger, rocketed on a nine-month, 422 million-mile (680-million-kilometre) journey that will culminate in the first-ever landing within the red planet’s Arctic Circle to analyse soil and ice, looking for traces of organic compounds.

2008: US President George W Bush signs legislation that allows the State Department to settle all remaining lawsuits against Libya by American victims of terrorism.

2009: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il issues a “special pardon” freeing two jailed American journalists after talks with former US President Bill Clinton.

2010: A crush of mud finally plugs the blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, three months after the offshore drilling rig explosion that unleashed one of the worst oil spills in US history and a summer of misery along the Gulf Coast.

2011: Israeli aircraft and tanks pound Gaza, killing seven Hamas militants and five civilians in a surge of fighting sparked by a Palestinian rocket attack on an Israeli school bus the day before.

2012: Gunmen snatch 47 Iranian pilgrims just outside Damascus in a brazen attack that reveals the growing instability at the center of President Bashar Assad’s power.

2013: Security forces close roads, put up extra blast walls and increase patrols near some of the more than 20 US missions in the Muslim world that Washington had ordered closed following warnings of a possible al-Qaeda attack.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (1792-1822); Hans Christian Andersen, Danish fairy tale writer (1805-1875); Britain’s Queen Mother Elizabeth (1900-2002); Louis Armstrong, US jazz musician (1901-1971); Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat (1912-1947); Rene Goscinny, French author of Asterix (1926-1977); Assia Djebar, Algerian author (1936- ); Billy Bob Thornton, US actor (1955- )

–AP

CAP:

The late Queen Mother