TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1935: The Nuremberg laws are passed, making discrimination against Jews part of Germany’s national policy and making the swastika the official symbol of Nazi Germany.

OTHER EVENTS

1590: Giovanni Battista signs treaty with French Huguenots to bring army of 156,000 German and Swiss mercenaries into France.

1776: British forces occupy New York City during the American Revolution.

1777: Polish Count Casimir Pulaski is commissioned major general in American Revolutionary Army.

1810: Mexico rejects Spanish rule.

1821: Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador declare independence.

1882: British forces occupy Cairo; Arab Pasha surrenders and is banished to Ceylon — now Sri Lanka.

1916: Tanks are used for the first time in war, in a British attack on German lines near the Somme in France.

1917: Russia is proclaimed a republic by Alexander Kerensky, the head of a provisional government.

1918: Serb and French forces break through Bulgarian lines on the Salonika front during World War I. Bulgaria soon sues for peace.

1938: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain visits Germany’s Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden where Hitler states his determination to annex the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

1940: The Royal Air Force inflicts heavy losses on the Luftwaffe as the tide turns in the Battle of Britain during World War II.

1942: German armies attack Russian city of Stalingrad in World War II.

1946: People’s Republic is formed in Bulgaria after referendum rejects monarchy.

1950: UN forces under US General Douglas MacArthur land at Inchon, South Korea, halting North Korean advance.

1953: The UN General Assembly rejects Communist demands that China be admitted into the organisation in order to help plan a Korean peace conference.

1959: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev is welcomed by US President Dwight Eisenhower as he arrives for an unprecedented two-week visit to the US.

1963: Four children are killed when a bomb goes off during Sunday services at a black Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama.

1971: Laotian forces recapture the strategic Boloven Plateau town of Paksong following a fierce battle with North Vietnamese troops that claims 481 lives.

1982: Iran’s former foreign minister, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, is executed after being convicted of plotting against the Government.

1995: Tanks, howitzers and other heavy weaponry roll away from Sarajevo as Bosnian Serbs begin complying with a US-brokered agreement to ease the shattered city’s siege.

1997: An Egyptian military court convicts 72 Islamic militants of subversion and sentences four of them to death.

2003: A fire at Saudi Arabia’s largest prison, al-Hair, in Riyadh, kills 67 inmates and wounds 23 others. The blaze is the deadliest prison fire in Saudi history.

2008: Zimbabwe’s Opposition Leader Morgan Tsvangirai signs a power-sharing agreement with his nemesis President Robert Mugabe.

2009: Helicopter-borne US commandos attack a convoy in rural southern Somalia, killing top al-Qaeda fugitive Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, wanted for the 2002 car bombing of a beach resort in Kenya and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner.

2012: Al-Qaeda’s most active branch in the Middle East calls for more attacks on US embassies, seeking to co-opt anger over an anti-Muslim film even as the wave of protests that swept 20 countries eases.

2013: A wave of car bombings and other attacks in Iraq kill at least 58 people in mostly Shiite-majority cities, another reminder of the government’s failure to stem the surge of violence that is feeding sectarian tensions.

2014: US Secretary of State John Kerry says he will not shut the door on the possibility of working with Iran against a common enemy in the Islamic State militant group but rules out coordinating on military action.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

James Fenimore Cooper, US writer (1789-1851); Robert Benchley, US drama critic (1849-1945); Agatha Christie, British mystery writer (1890-1976); Jean Renoir, French film director (1894-1979); Jessye Norman, US soprano (1945- ); Tommy Lee Jones, US actor (1946- ); Oliver Stone, US film director (1946- ); Britain’s Prince Harry (1984- )

–AP