Today is the 234th day of 2017. There are 131 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1990: Scores of angry smokers block street near Moscow’s Red Square for hours in protest against summer-long cigarette shortage in the Russian capital.

OTHER EVENTS

1485: England’s King Richard III is killed fighting against overwhelming odds at the Battle of Bosworth, ending War of the Roses.

1567: Spanish Duke of Alba establishes “Council of Blood” and begins reign of terror as military governor in the Netherlands.

1642: English Civil War begins when King Charles I brands parliament and its soldiers as traitors.

1654: Jacob Barsimson, said to be first Jewish immigrant to America, lands at New Amsterdam.

1717: Spain attacks Sardinia under pretext that some Spanish subjects have been arrested in Italy.

1775: England’s King George III proclaims the American colonies in a state of open rebellion.

1784: Vincent Lunardi makes England’s first hot-air balloon flight, accompanied by a cat and dog.

1788: British found settlement in Sierra Leone, Africa, as asylum for freed slaves.

1799: Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte abandons the Egyptian campaign and slips past blockading British ships to return to France.

1851: The schooner America beats the Aurora off the English coast to win a trophy that would become known as the America’s Cup.

1911: Leonardo da Vinci painting Mona Lisa is stolen from Louvre Museum in Paris, France. It is recovered in Italy in 1913.

1941: Nazi troops reach outskirts of Soviet city of Leningrad in World War II.

1945: Iranian army kills seven rebellious officers and men who were planning to lead an attack on the Russian-garrisoned city of Meshed.

1952: The United States announces it would pay South Korea another $35 million installment to help defray the cost of maintaining US troops in Korea.

1955: A US Navy patrol plane with 16 men aboard is shot down off mainland China by Chinese Communist aircraft.

1958: US President Dwight Eisenhower offers to halt US nuclear tests for one year on condition that the Soviet Union refrains from further testing and agrees to open negotiations for an international nuclear test control system.

1963: Five exiled relatives of King Saud, including Prince Talal, his half brother, petition the Saudi Arabia embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, for permission to return to Saudi Arabia. They had been exiled in 1962 after forming a Saudi Liberation Front in Cairo in opposition to the king.

1968: Pope Paul VI arrives in Bogota, Colombia, for the start of his first papal visit to Latin America.

1972: Rhodesia is asked to withdraw from 20th Summer Olympic Games because of its racial policies.

1981: A Taiwanese domestic jetliner explodes in mid-air and bursts into flames, killing all 110 people on board.

1991: Yugoslav federal official acknowledges that a truce ordered in Croatia on August 7 has collapsed and 70 people have died in fighting since then.

1993: Former Prime Minister Kasdi Merbah of Algeria, an advocate of dialogue with violent Islamic extremists, is assassinated in an ambush that also killed his son, brother and two others.

1994: Ernesto Zedillo, rolling up a commanding presidential victory in Mexico, vows to stick to the free-market course set by his predecessor.

1996: Monsoon rains and a snowstorm sweep across the Himalayas during a Hindu pilgrimage to a mountain temple, killing more than 200. Tens of thousands are stranded.

1997: A cyclone in eastern India leaves 200 fishermen missing on the Bay of Bengal. Tidal waves six metres (20 feet) high destroy 2,500 homes.

1998: Angolan troops enter the war in Congo on the side of President Laurent Kabila, apparently saving the capital Kinshasa.

1999: Prince Faisal bin Fahd, the eldest son of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, dies at 54. The prince was not in line for the throne.

2000: Three UN aid workers are severely injured in an attack by pro-Indonesian militias in West Timor. The next day, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees suspends operations in West Timor.

2002: About 45 kilogrammes (100 pounds) of weapons-grade uranium is transferred from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, to Russia, to be converted for use in commercial power generation. The uranium is considered a potential target for terrorist groups or rogue states seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

2003: The Nigerian Red Cross reports that 100 people have been killed and 1,000 others injured in five days of ethnic clashes in the southern port city of Warri.

2004: US journalist Micah Garen, who was kidnapped in Iraq more than a week before, is released in the southern city of Nasiriyah.

2005: Saboteurs trigger multiple blackouts that halt Iraq’s entire oil export capacity, a move that costs Baghdad US$4.5 million per hour and removes 1.5 million barrels a day from the world market.

2006: A Russian passenger jet crashes in Ukraine during a thunderstorm just minutes after sending a distress signal, killing all 170 people on board, including dozens of children.

2007: Fourteen US soldiers are killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashes during a nighttime mission in northern Iraq.

2008: Columns of Russian tanks roll out of key positions deep inside Georgia as a promised pullback begins.

2009: Britain rejects any suggestion it has struck a deal with Libya to free the Lockerbie bomber — questions that arose when the leader of the North African nation, Moammar Gadhafi, publicly thanked British officials as he embraced the man convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 airline bombing.

2010: All 33 Chilean miners trapped deep underground for 17 days are found alive. A probe sent some 2,257 feet (688 metres) deep into the collapsed mine early in the morning comes back with a handwritten note: “All 33 of us are fine in the shelter”.

2011: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is nowhere to be found as his 42-year rule teeters on the brink of collapse. Months of NATO airstrikes have left his Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli largely demolished. Most of his security forces fled or surrendered when rebel forces rolled into the capital and took control of most of the city.

2012: Adherents of a religious sect in western Mexico are physically blocking schoolteachers from entering their walled community, setting up one of the most high-profile confrontations between religious and civil authorities in Mexico since the 1940s.

2013: Egypt’s ousted leader Hosni Mubarak is released from prison and transported to a military hospital in a Cairo suburb where he will be held under house arrest.

Today’s Birthdays

Claude Debussy, French composer (1862-1918); Dorothy Parker, US writer/poet (1893-1967); Leni Riefenshtal, German film-maker (1902-2003); Deng Xiaoping, Chinese leader (1904-1997); Henri Cartier-Bresson, French photographer (1908-2004); Arthur Sackler, US physician (1913-1987); Karlheinz Stockhausen, German composer (1928-2007); Ray Bradbury, author (1920-2012); Tori Amos, US singer (1963- )

— AP