Today is the 314th day of 2017. There are 51 days left in the year.

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 (six miles).

1917: Some 41 suffragists are arrested for picketing in front of the White House.

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.

1942: Winston Churchill delivers a speech in London in which he said, “I have not become the King’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”

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 pullout from Beirut.

1994: Chandrika Kumaratunga, daughter of two prime ministers, wins presidential election in Sri Lanka; Iraq formally recognises 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.

2004: Word reaches the United States of the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at age 75 (because of the time difference, it was the early hours of November 11 in Paris, where Arafat died).

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 say is 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.

2012: Two people are killed when a powerful gas explosion rocks an Indianapolis neighbourhood, damaging or destroying more than 80 homes. (Five people were later convicted of charges in connection with the blast, which prosecutors said stemmed from a plot to collect insurance money.)

2016: President-elect Donald Trump takes a triumphant tour of the nation’s capital, where he holds a cordial White House meeting with President Barack Obama, sketched out priorities with Republican congressional leaders and takes in the majestic view from where he would be sworn in to office. After seven times as finalists for the National Toy Hall of Fame, the Little People of Fisher-Price’s house, barn and school bus are enshrined along with the swing and Dungeons & Dragons in the hall’s class of 2016.

— AP

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- )