Today is the 277th day of 2017. There are 88 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1958: The first transatlantic passenger jetliner service begins by British Overseas Airways Corp with flights between London and New York.

OTHER EVENTS

1865: Napoleon III of France agrees to Prussian supremacy in Germany and to a united Italy after meeting Otto von Bismarck in Biarritz.

1895: The first US Open golf tournament is held at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island.

1910: Portugal’s King Manuel II flees to England on outbreak of revolution in Lisbon. A republic is declared the next day.

1930: Former presidential candidate Getulio Vargas leads a revolt in Brazil and later becomes president.

1957: The Soviet Union puts the first spacecraft, Sputnik, into orbit around earth, heralding the start of the space age.

1980: Jordan becomes the first Arab state to openly support Iraq in its war with Iran, sending food and supplies.

1990: German lawmakers meet in the Reichstag for the first meeting of reunified Germany’s parliament.

1992: Government and Mozambique National Resistance rebels sign a peace treaty to end 15 years of civil war.

1993: Two US Blackhawk helicopters headed to capture a local warlord are shot down in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. Gun battles continue into the night while rescue attempts are made in hostile territory, leaving 18 US troops dead and 90 wounded.

1996: Armed Taliban fighters haul men off the streets and force them into mosques to hear fiery sermons during the first Muslim holiday in Kabul, Afghanistan, since the new Islamic rulers took over.

1997: The death toll reaches at least 100 in Algeria after a two- day surge of massacres attributed to the Armed Islamic Group.

1999: A Croatian court convicts Dinko Sakic, a commander of a World War II death camp in Nazi-controlled Croatia, to 20 years in prison on war crime charges.

2000: Congo President Laurent Kabila orders a $20-million, 267-carat diamond returned to local businessman, Alphonse Ngoyi Kasanji, who was imprisoned while authorities investigated if it was stolen from a state mining company.

2002: John Walker Lindh, a US citizen captured by US forces while he was fighting with Afghanistan’s now-deposed Taliban militia, is sentenced to 20 years in prison.

2007: North Korea pledges to detail its nuclear programmes and disable all activities at its main reactor complex by year’s end, after which they sign a wide-ranging reconciliation pact with South Korea.

2010: The Nobel Prize in medicine goes to a man whose work led to the first test tube baby, an achievement that helped bring 4 million infants into the world and raised challenging new questions about human reproduction.

2011: After Italian prisoners gave her a boisterous send-off, Amanda Knox makes her way home to America, holing up with family on the upper deck of a jetliner to Seattle as she enjoys her first full day of freedom since her murder conviction was reversed.

2012: A team of FBI agents arrives in Benghazi, Libya, to investigate the assault against the US consulate and leaves after 12 hours on the ground, as the hunt for those possibly connected to the attack that killed ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans narrows to one or two people in an extremist group.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Francois Guizot, French politician-historian (1787-1874); Buster Keaton, US comedian (1895-1966); Charlton Heston, US actor (1923-2008), Jackie Collins, US author (1937-), Susan Sarandon, US actress (1946-), Jon Secada, singer (1961-).