TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1982: The Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical Cats opens in New York, beginning its record run of 7,485 performances.

OTHER EVENTS

1765: The Stamp Act Congress convenes in New York to draw up colonial grievances against England.

1769: Captain James Cook lands in New Zealand for the first time, at Poverty Bay.

1826: The first gravity-powered American railroad goes into operation, running from Quincy to Milton, Massachusetts, carrying granite rock down to the waterfront.

1879: Britain invades Afghanistan.

1935: League of Nations declares Italy aggressor in Ethiopia.

1942: US President Franklin D Roosevelt announces an allied commission will be established to investigate Axis crimes against civilians and “war criminals” will be punished.

1949: German Democratic Republic is established in Soviet-occupied eastern Germany.

1950: UN General Assembly approves Allied advance north of 38th parallel in Korean conflict.

1954: Marian Anderson becomes the first black singer hired by the New York Metropolitan Opera House.

1958: President Iskander Nirza proclaims martial law in Pakistan.

1963: US President John F Kennedy signs nuclear test ban treaty between United States, Britain and Soviet Union.

1970: Egypt’s Vice-President Anwar Sadat officially succeeds the late General Gamal Abdel Nasser as president.

1975: The Soviet Union and East Germany sign a revised treaty of “friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance” eliminating all reference to the eventual unification of the two German states.

1981: Egypt’s Vice President Hosni Mubarak is nominated as successor to slain President Anwar Sadat.

1987: Chinese police set up roadblocks and patrol Lhasa, capital of Tibet, to prevent pro-independence demonstrations.

1988: Thousands of workers in Yugoslavia demand higher wages and ouster of Communist leaders.

1989: Hungary’s Communist Party renounces Marxism in favour of democratic socialism during a party congress in Budapest.

1991: UN weapons experts report that allied bombing during the Persian Gulf war left a vital Iraqi nuclear installation virtually undamaged and completely missed a second key site.

1992: Trade representatives from the United States, Canada and Mexico initial the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement in Texas.

1993: African National Congress President Nelson Mandela and South African President F W de Klerk are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in dismantling apartheid and negotiating South Africa’s transition to a nonracial democracy.

1995: New York’s Central Park is transformed into a giant open-air cathedral as Pope John Paul II celebrates Mass before a flock of 250,000.

1996: Two car bombs explode inside the British army’s heavily guarded headquarters in Northern Ireland, injuring 31 people.

2000: Vojislav Kostunica takes the oath of office as Yugoslavia’s first popularly elected president, closing the turbulent era of Slobodan Milosevic.

2001: The United States and Britain launch a military attack on Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept.11 terrorist attacks on the United States, and his Taliban backers in Afghanistan.

2002: Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships attack targets in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, killing 16 Palestinians and injuring at least 80 others. Most of the victims are killed when an Israeli helicopter fires a missile into a crowded street.

2003: California votes in a special election to recall Democratic Governor Gray Davis from office and replace him with Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican action-film star.

2004: Security forces go on alert across Pakistan after two devastating attacks killed 70 people within a week. The killing of a top Pakistani al-Qaeda operative a month earlier by security forces spawned a bout of sectarian violence between rival Sunni and Shiite militant groups.

2005: Egyptian Mohamed ElBaradei and his International Atomic Energy agency win the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, strengthening his position in a job he nearly lost because of a dispute with the US over Iraq and Iran.

2006: The first European memorial to journalists killed on the job is inaugurated in France on the same day that two reporters are shot to death in Afghanistan and another is killed in Russia.

2007: The UN’s highest court grants Honduras sovereignty over four Caribbean islands in its decades-old dispute with Nicaragua, and carves up rich fishing grounds and offshore exploration concessions for oil and gas.

2008: A former US Army contractor pleads guilty to stealing nearly $40 million worth of jet and diesel fuel from a US Army base in Iraq and selling it on the black market.

2009: Pakistan’s powerful military rejects US attempts to link billions of dollars in foreign aid to increased monitoring of its anti-terror efforts, complicating American attempts to strike al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters on the Afghan border.

2010: The toxic red sludge that burst out of a Hungarian factory’s reservoir reaches the mighty Danube after wreaking havoc on smaller rivers and creeks, and downstream nations rush to test their waters.

2011: Revolutionary fighters assault Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte from all sides in what they hope will be a final all-out offensive to crush resistance in the most important bastion of regime loyalists.

2012: President Hugo Chavez wins re-election and a new endorsement of his socialist project, surviving his closest race yet after a bitter campaign in which the opposition accused him of unfairly using Venezuela’s oil wealth and his near total control of state institutions to his advantage.

2013: A string of attacks kill nine members of Egypt’s security and military forces and hit the country’s main satellite communications station in an apparent retaliation by Islamic militants a day after more than 50 supporters of the ousted president were killed in clashes with the police.