TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS

2013: Typhoon Haiyan leaves thousands dead in the Philippines.

OTHER EVENTS

1871: American journalist Henry Stanley finds African explorer Dr David Livingstone in Ujiji, central Africa, on Lake Tanganyika; delivers his famous greeting “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”

1885: The son of German engineer Otto Daimler becomes the first motorcyclist, riding his father’s invention 10 kilometres (6 miles).

1928: Hirohito is enthroned as Emperor of Japan.

1937: President Getulio Vargas of Brazil cancels elections and decrees the Estado Novo dictatorship.

1938: Anti-Semitic legislation is adopted in Italy.

1954: The Iwo Jima Memorial is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia. The battle for Iwo Jima in Japan during World War II resulted in the deaths of 21,000 Japanese and 6,800 American soldiers.

1963: A cholera epidemic in India and Pakistan kills more than 1,500 people in a few weeks.

1969: The children’s educational programme Sesame Street makes its debut on PBS television in the United States.

1970: The Soviet Union launches Luna 17, which lands a roving vehicle on the Moon’s surface.

1980: East German President Erich Honecker makes his first state visit to a western country — Austria.

1982: The newly finished Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial opens in Washington, DC.

1987: Niger’s President Seyni Kountche dies in Paris and is replaced as head of State by army chief Ali Seibou.

1990: Chandra Shekhar is sworn in as prime minister of India; Shiite Muslim militias begin 10-day pull-out from Beirut.

1994: Chandrika Kumaratunga, daughter of two prime ministers, wins presidential election in Sri Lanka; Iraq formally recognizes Kuwait as sovereign state.

1998: A jury in New York City convicts Corey Arthur, 20, of second-degree murder in the 1997 torture and murder of Jonathan Levin, his former high-school English teacher. Levin was the son of Gerald Levin, the chairman of Time Warner Inc.

1999: The US Justice Department strips a retired Ohio factory worker of his citizenship, charging he served as an armed guard at a Nazi slave labour camp.

2000: Philippine President Joseph Estrada denies new corruption allegations that he received a $20-million kickback from the sale of the country’s largest telephone company and pocketed more than $16 million from a controversial stock sale.

2006: Zimbabwe’s government launches a programme to issue 99-year leases to black farmers allocated land seized mostly from white farmers.

2007: Six US troops are killed when insurgents ambush their foot patrol in the high mountains of eastern Afghanistan, making 2007 the deadliest year for US troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

2008: Railway and mass transit workers in Italy stage a strike, creating chaos for commuters, while a wildcat protest by some of Alitalia’s staff forces the national airline to scrap dozens of flights.

2009: The navies of North and South Korea clash at sea for the first time in seven years in what some analysts said was a provocation by the communist nation a week before President Barack Obama’s visit to Seoul.

2010: President Barack Obama tells global leaders in Seoul, South Korea, the burden is on them as well as the US to fix trade-stifling imbalances and currency disputes that imperil economic recoveries everywhere.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Martin Luther, German leader of the Reformation (1483-1546); Francois Couperin, French composer (1668-1733); Friedrich von Schiller, German author (1759-1805); Oliver Goldsmith, Irish author (1728-1774); Richard Burton, British actor (1925-1984); Mackenzie Phillips, US actress (1959- ); Brittany Murphy, US actress (1977-2009); Sinbad, US actor/comedian (1956- )

—AP