TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1976: Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst is sentenced to seven years in prison for her part in a 1974 bank robbery with members of a militant group who had earlier kidnapped her. She is granted clemency by US President Jimmy Carter and released after 22 months.

OTHER EVENTS

1568: Spanish capture English ships at San Juan, Puerto Rico, from Sir John Hawkins’ fleet.

1688: France’s King Louis XIV declares war against Holy Roman Empire, called the War of the League of Augsburg.

1789: US Congress passes the First Judiciary Act, which provides for an Attorney General and a Supreme Court.

1852: French inventor Henri Giffard makes the first flight in a powered airship, cruising with steam power over Paris.

1877: The last of the samurai rebellions against the reinstated Japanese emperor is defeated by the new conscript armies.

1932: The Poona Pact between Hindu religious leaders, forced by Mahatma Gandhi’s hunger strike, gives new electoral rights to low-caste “untouchables” in India.

1943: Soviet army crosses Dnieper River north of Kiev as Germans retreat in World War II.

1948: First conference in London of representatives from Britain’s African colonies; Mildred Gillars, accused of being Nazi wartime radio propagandist “Axis Sally,” pleads innocent in Washington to charges of treason. She ends up serving 12 years in prison.

1966: Mob ransacks and burns Portuguese embassy in Leopoldville in the Congo.

1969: The Chicago Seven trial begins. Five of the defendants are convicted of crossing state lines to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The convictions are later overturned.

1971: Britain expels 90 Soviets for espionage activities.

1982: The US Government lifts the military sanctions that it had imposed on Argentina during the war with Great Britain over the Falkland Islands.

1987: Armed forces seize control of Transkei, one of South Africa’s black homelands, ousting the prime minister.

1990: Iraq declares the Kuwaiti dinar invalid and withdraws it from circulation; Soviet lawmakers endorse plan calling for market economy; East Germany formally withdraws from Warsaw Pact.

1991: Iraq provokes international outrage over its resistance to efforts to dismantle its arms program when Iraqi troops detain a team of United Nations weapons inspectors in Baghdad.

1993: Nelson Mandela asks the world community to lift economic and diplomatic sanctions against South Africa.

1994: A report prepared by the CIA reveals confessed spy Aldrich H Ames exposed 55 clandestine US and allied operations to the Soviet Union and Russia.

1995: After all-night talks, Israel and the PLO agree to sign a pact at the White House ending nearly three decades of Israeli occupation of West Bank cities.

1998: Iran says it is distancing itself from the reward offered for the killing of author Salman Rushdie, and is ready to exchange ambassadors with Britain.

2005: Crowds opposed to the war in Iraq surge past the White House, shouting “Peace now” in the largest anti-war protest in the nation’s capital since the US invasion. Police estimate around 100,000 protesters.

2006: Swiss voters ratify new asylum and immigration laws that make it more difficult for refugees to receive assistance and effectively block non-European unskilled workers from entering the country.

2007: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad questions the official version of the Sept. 11 attacks and defends the right to cast doubt on the Holocaust in a tense appearance at Columbia University in New York.

2008: Japan’s lawmakers elect Taro Aso, leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, as prime minister.

2009: For the first time, an experimental vaccine prevents infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result for many scientists who thought previous failures meant such a vaccine might never be possible.

2010: Nigerian authorities open the gates at two swollen dams in the country’s rain-soaked north, sending a flood into a neighbouring state that displaces 2 million people.

2011: In one of the bloodiest days of Yemen’s uprising, government troops backed by snipers and shelling attack a square full of Yemeni protesters and battle with pro-opposition forces in the capital, killing at least 40 people.

2012: A European court rules that radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri can be extradited to the United States to face terrorism charges, including allegedly trying to set up an al-Qaeda training camp in the western state of Oregon.

2013: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says his nation is prepared to immediately engage in stalled negotiations over its disputed nuclear programme — but only under certain conditions.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Albrecht von Wallenstein, Bohemian soldier (1583-1634); Horace Walpole, British writer (1717-1797); F Scott Fitzgerald, US writer (1896-1940); Sir William Dobell, Australian artist (1899-1970); Jim Henson, US puppeteer (1936-1990); Jim McKay, US sportscaster (1921-2008); Anthony Newley, British actor-singer (1931-1999); Nia Vardalos, American-Canadian actress-writer (1962- )