TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2011: Former President Jacques Chirac is convicted of corruption related to his 18-year term as mayor of Paris, becoming France’s first leader to be convicted of crime since Marshal Philippe Petain who headed the Nazi collaborationist regime during World War II, in 1945.

OTHER EVENTS

1640: The Duke of Braganca is crowned John IV, the first king of Portugal after 60 years of Spanish rule.

1711: The plague breaks out in Copenhagen.

1791: Sweden’s King Gustavus III offers to head the crusade against France.

1806: Napoleon Bonaparte enters Warsaw, Poland.

1916: The French defeat Germans in Battle of Verdun during World War I.

1939: The motion picture Gone With the Wind premieres in Atlanta.

1944: The plane carrying American bandleader Glenn Miller, a US Army Major, disappears over the English Channel, probably the victim of bombs jettisoned from British bombers returning from an unsuccessful raid.

1952: China rejects India’s plan for Korean armistice.

1957: The United Nations rejects Greece’s proposal that Cyprus is entitled to self-determination.

1961: Former Nazi Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death in Jerusalem.

1965: Two US manned spacecraft, Gemini 6 and Gemini 7, manoeuvre to within 3 metres (10 feet) of each other while in orbit and relay data about Venus as they fly past the planet.

1970: Soviet spacecraft starts sending messages from planet Venus.

1978: US President Jimmy Carter announces he would grant diplomatic recognition to Communist China on New Year’s Day and sever official relations with Taiwan.

1979: The deposed Shah of Iran flies from the United States to “temporary” exile in Panama.

1986: Rival ethnic groups battle in Karachi and set hundreds of homes and shops ablaze in the city’s worst rioting since Pakistan’s Independence 39 years earlier.

1989: Manuel Noriega is named head of government and declares Panama in “a state of war” with the United States; a popular uprising begins, resulting in the downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

1990: Cattle rancher Darly Alves da Silva and his son Darci Alves Pereira are convicted of murdering Brazilian rainforest defender Chico Mendes.

1991: A ferry hits a reef and sinks off the Egyptian port of Safaga, killing nearly 500 people.

1992: Chess genius Bobby Fischer is indicted in the United States on charges of violating economic sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing a highly publicised match with Boris Spassky.

1994: The Swedish Government decides not to salvage the bodies from the ferry Estonia, which sank in the Baltic, killing 800 people. The decision is opposed by the victims’ relatives.

1995: Pioneer 6, a spacecraft launched on a journey through the solar system on December 16, 1965, gets an early happy birthday call from NASA and answers back.

1996: A Serbian court restores the opposition’s election victory in Nis, Serbia’s second-largest city.

1997: The prosecutor for the tribunal on war crimes in Yugoslavia accuses French peacekeepers in Bosnia of “total inertia” when it comes to arresting war crimes suspects. The French reject the criticism as “scandalous”.

1999: Venezuelans overwhelmingly approve a new constitution that eliminates the Senate and vastly increases the power of President Hugo Chavez, allowing him to stay in office for up to 13 years.

2004: The ex-Iraqi general known as “Chemical Ali”, who is accused of using chemical weapons attacks to kill thousands of Kurds, is announced as the first detained former Saddam Hussein regime figure to stand trial.

2005: The UN reluctantly withdraws peacekeeping staff from Eritrea, saying it faced an unprecedented crisis in its monitoring of the cold peace between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

2006: Japan’s conservative government revises the country’s central education law to require schools to encourage patriotism in the classroom and upgrades the Defence Agency to a full ministry for the first time since World War II.

2007: A British suspect in an alleged plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jetliners escapes from police custody in Pakistan. Rashid Rauf fled after appearing before a judge at court.

2008: Three African armies have launched an offensive against Ugandan rebels based in eastern Congo in an attempt to end one of the continent’s longest and most brutal wars.

2009: Britain pledges to reform a peculiar legal power that lets judges order the arrest of visiting politicians and generals — a threat currently focused on Israeli visitors that, one day, might be invoked against Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin.

2010: Police detain more than 1,000 people in Moscow and several other Russian cities after weekend rioting in the capital between racist hooligans and mostly Muslim ethnic minorities left dozens injured.

2012: Thousands of opposition supporters gather outside the old KGB headquarters in central Moscow to mark a year of protests against Vladimir Putin and his Government.

2013: Chile’s once and future leader Michelle Bachelet easily wins a presidential run-off election, returning centre-left parties to power by promising profound changes in response to years of street protests.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Nero, Roman emperor (AD 37- AD 68); Henri Becquerel, French chemist (1852-1908); Gustave Eiffel, French engineer (1832-1923); Maxwell Anderson, US playwright (1888-1959); J Paul Getty, US oil tycoon (1892-1976); Tim Conway, US comedian/actor (1933-); Don Johnson, US actor (1949- ); Julie Taymor, US director (1952- ).

— AP