Today is the 43rd day of 2015. There are 322 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1998: Cuba releases “several dozen” prisoners, whose freedom was sought by Pope John Paul II during his January trip to Cuba.

OTHER EVENTS

1554: Lady Jane Grey, who claimed the throne of England for nine days, is beheaded after being charged with treason.

1577: Don John of Austria, new Governor of the Netherlands, issues edict to settle civil war.

1610: France’s King Henry IV signs alliance with German Protestant Union.

1689: Declaration of Rights in England, in which William and Mary are proclaimed King and Queen for life.

1909: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded in the US.

1912: Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, abdicates, ending more than 2,000 years of imperial rule.

1915: The cornerstone for the Lincoln Memorial is laid in Washington.

1924: George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue premieres in New York City.

1953: Britain and Egypt agree to end Anglo-Egyptian rule of Sudan and take steps toward granting self-rule.

1974: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Soviet Nobel Prize winner, is arrested at his Moscow apartment and is exiled the following day.

1986: Andrija Artukovic, 86, is extradited from United States to Yugoslavia to stand trial for war crimes during World War II. He later dies awaiting execution.

1992: UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali opens peace talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire in Somalia.

1999: US President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the Senate in an impeachment trial stemming from the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

2000: “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz dies at 77 following a battle with colon cancer, just as the last original comic strip of his half-century career was being published in newspapers worldwide.

2003: At least 30 people die and 160 others are injured in riots in La Paz, Bolivia, as striking police officers and protesters clash with the military.

2005: Police kill three demonstrators when thousands of protesters rampage and set fires that send a pall of smoke over Lome’s turquoise coast, as pressure at home and abroad mounts against Togo’s army-installed president.

2007: An Iraqi court sentences Saddam Hussein’s former deputy to death for his role in the killings of Shiites in the Iraqi town of Dujail in 1982: The court ruled that Taha Yassin Ramadan’s earlier sentence of life in prison was too lenient.

2010: A men’s Olympic luger from the country of Georgia dies after a high-speed crash on a track that is the world’s fastest and has raised safety concerns among competitors. Tearful Olympics president Jacques Rogge says the death, hours before the opening ceremony in Vancouver, British Columbia, “clearly casts a shadow over these games”.

2011: Thousands of Algerians defy Government warnings and dodge barricades and riot police to rally in their capital, demanding democratic reforms a day after mass protests toppled Egypt’s autocratic ruler.

2012: Greece’s Parliament approves an austerity and

debt-relief bill, crucial for the country to avoid bankruptcy and remain in the Eurozone.

2013: North Korea conducts its third nuclear test, taking a crucial step toward its goal of building a bomb small enough to be fitted on a missile capable of striking the United States.

2014: Medical experts say a Salvadoran fisherman who says he drifted at sea for more than a year, surviving on raw fish, turtles and bird blood is in stunningly good health but psychologically fragile.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Charles Darwin, English scientist (1809-1882); Abraham Lincoln, US president (1809-1865); Michael Ironside, Canadian actor (1950- ); Christina Ricci US actress (1980- ); Josh Brolin, US actor (1968- )

–AP