Today is the 357th day of 2014. There are 8 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1972: Earthquake strikes Managua, Nicaragua, killing 10,000.

OTHER EVENTS

1783: George Washington resigns as commander in chief of the Continental Army after the American Revolution and returns to his home at Mount Vernon, Virginia.

1832: The French take Antwerp, forcing Holland to recognise Belgium’s independence.

1947: The transistor is invented at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey. This made equipment miniaturisation possible and ushered in a tidal wave of electronic miracles including the personal computer.

1948: Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese World War II leaders are executed in Tokyo.

1950: A treaty in which Vietnam becomes a sovereign nation within the French Union is signed in Saigon.

1968: Eighty-two crew members of the US intelligence ship Pueblo are released by North Korea, 11 months after they were captured.

1977: Eight French nationals kidnapped in May by guerrillas fighting for the independence of the former Spanish Sahara, are handed over to UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim in Algiers.

1986: The experimental US airplane, Voyager, lands in California’s Mojave Desert after becoming the first aircraft to circumnavigate the globe nonstop without refuelling.

1989: United States sends 2,000 reinforcement troops to Panama to combat unexpectedly stiff resistance from Panamanian troops loyal to ousted General Manuel Antonio Noriega.

1993: The Rhine sweeps to its greatest height in 67 years, flooding Cologne’s old town and menacing the new Parliament building in Bonn. The death toll in European flooding reaches six.

1995: A fire in Dabwali, India, kills 540 people, including 170 children, during a year-end party being held near a children’s school.

1997: Gunmen charge into a village of rebel sympathisers in Chiapas, Mexico, and kill 45 people, including 15 children.

1998: South Korean police use water cannon and tear gas to evict a group of monks from the Chogye temple, after the monks threw firebombs and rocks at them. The clash ends a 40-day stand-off between rival monks at the spiritual home to eight million Buddhists.

2001: San Luis Governor Adolfo Rodriguez Saa takes over as interim president of Argentina, immediately halting payments on the nation’s $132-billion debt. He resigns a week later saying “an attitude of pettiness and haggling” within his Justicialist party has left him unable to govern.

2003: An explosion at a natural gas field near Chongqing in China’s Sichuan province kills at least 198 people. The explosion reportedly occurred when a pocket of natural gas and hydrogen sulfide was accidentally drilled open.

2005: South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk resigns from his university after he was found to have faked stem-cell breakthroughs that kindled worldwide optimism of revolutionary cures for disease.

2006: UN Security Council votes unanimously to impose the first set of sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment amid suspicions Tehran wants to build nuclear weapons.

2007: The world’s last Hindu monarchy is to be swept aside under an agreement signed between Nepal’s former communist rebels and its major political parties that sets the stage for the country to become a republic.

2008: A pair of pandas leave China on a long-awaited goodwill journey to their new home in Taiwan in the latest move symbolising the warming ties between the rivals.

2010: A Romanian television engineer, apparently distraught that budget cuts had reduced benefits for his autistic teenage son, dives more than 20 feet (about seven meteers) from a balcony onto the floor of Romania’s parliament, then shouts “Freedom!” as emergency workers take him out on a stretcher.

2013: The last two imprisoned members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot walk free, criticizing the amnesty measure that released them as a publicity stunt.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Richard Arkwright, English inventor (1732-1792); Sarah Breedlove Walker, US philanthropist (1867-1919); Joseph Smith, US founder of the Mormon Church (1805-1844); Jose Greco, Spanish dancer-choreographer (1918-2000); Silvia, queen of Sweden (1944- ); Akihito, emperor of Japan (1933- ); Eddie Vedder, US musician (1964- )

–AP