Today is the 278th day of 2015. There are 87 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1947: In the first televised White House address, US President Harry S Truman asks Americans to refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Thursdays to help stockpile grain for starving people in Europe.

OTHER EVENTS

1795: Artillery commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte shoots down rebels marching against the National Convention in Paris, saving the republic. He is soon appointed commander of the army of the interior.

1796: Spain declares war on Britain.

1892: The Dalton Gang, notorious for its train robberies, is practically wiped out while attempting to rob a pair of banks in Coffeyville, Kansas.

1897: Brazil’s army crushes the rebel forces of messianic leader Antonio Conselheiro and razes the communist-style settlement of Canudos in the north-eastern outback.

1908: Ferdinand I declares Bulgaria’s independence from the Ottoman Empire and assumes title of czar of Bulgaria.

1954: Britain, United States, Italy and Yugoslavia agree that Free Territory of Trieste should be divided into Italian and Yugoslav zones.

1962: The Beatles’ first hit, Love Me Do, is released in Britain.

1965: Pakistan severs diplomatic relations with Malaysia on grounds that Malaysia showed partiality in the Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir.

1970: Egypt’s only political party names Anwar Sadat to succeed late President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

1978: US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance travels to South Africa to promote transition to black rule in Namibia.

1981: Former Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is posthumously granted honorary US citizenship for his humanitarian actions during World War II.

1983: Lech Walesa, leader of Poland’s Solidarity laboUr movement, is named winner of Nobel Peace Prize.

1987: South Africa’s President P W Botha says his Government plans to permit some multiracial neighbourhoods.

1988: Chileans in a plebiscite turn down a proposal to extend General Augusto Pinochet’s rule until 1997.

1989: The Dalai Lama wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1991: Fighting erupts between Iraqi soldiers and Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq, in the second outbreak of violence between the two sides since the withdrawal of US and allied forces in July.

1993: China breaks moratorium on nuclear testing.

1994: Forty-eight bodies are found in two locations in Switzerland after a cult’s mass suicide-murder.

1996: Bosnia’s three-member presidency gets off to a rocky start as the Serb member refuses to attend the inauguration.

1998: A committee of the US Congress votes to recommend an impeachment inquiry of President Bill Clinton’s actions in the case involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

2006: European Union ministers endorse a plan to make permanent joint patrols that pick up migrants on the high seas, moving to end internal divisions over dealing with a surge of illegal immigration from Africa.

2010: Former French trader Jerome Kerviel is convicted on all counts in history’s biggest rogue trading scandal, sentenced to at least three years in prison and ordered to pay his former employer damages of euro 4.9 billion (US$6.7 billion) — a sum so staggering it drew gasps in the courtroom.

2011: The New York Police Department’s intelligence squad secretly assigned an undercover officer to monitor a prominent Muslim leader even as he decried terrorism, cooperated with the police and dined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

2014: Mexican security forces investigating the role of municipal police in deadly clashes with protesters have found buried human remains in mass graves on the edge of Iguala in the country’s south.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Robert Goddard, US inventor of modern rocket (1882-1945); Glynis Johns, South African-born actress (1923- ); Diane Cilento, Australian actress (1933-2011); Vaclav Havel, Czech politician, playwright and former dissident (1936-2011), Bob Geldof , British singer (1954- ), Kate Winslet, British actress (1975- )

–AP