Today is the 353rd day of 2017. There are 12 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1972: Apollo 17 spacecraft splashes down on target in Pacific Ocean, ending US Apollo programme of landing men on Moon.

OTHER EVENTS

1547: Great Britain passes a vagabond law.

1793: A young Napoleon Bonaparte takes Toulon, France, from the British and Spanish in his first major military victory.

1842: The United States recognises independence of Hawaii.

1843: Charles Dickens’ classic Yuletide tale, , is first published in England.

1907: A coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania, kills 239 workers.

1909: A civil war starts in Honduras.

1946: War breaks out in Indochina as troops under Ho Chi Minh launch widespread attacks against the French.

1966: UN General Assembly endorses a draft treaty banning the use of weapons of mass destruction in space.

1978: Indian Parliament ousts former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi from her newly elected seat and orders her jailed for contempt and breach of privilege.

1998: As US forces bomb Iraq, the US House of Representatives impeaches President Bill Clinton for obstructing justice and lying under oath about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

1999: Survivors wander through streets covered with rocks and mud as the death toll from massive mudslides and flooding in Venezuela surpasses 5,000.

2001: Jobless Argentines unleash their anger over a deep economic tailspin in a burst of looting and violence that targets supermarkets and shops on the fringes of Buenos Aires.

2002: US Secretary of State Colin Powell says Iraq is in “material breach” of UN Security Council resolutions for alleged omissions in a declaration of its weapons programmes.

2005: Uganda’s main opposition leader pleads not guilty to treason charges in a trial supporters claim is being staged to keep him out of 2006 presidential elections.

2008: The Pentagon formally approves war crimes charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Guantanamo detainee accused of masterminding the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen.

2010: Police in Denmark and Sweden say they thwarted a terrorist attack possibly hours before it was to begin, arresting five men they say planned to shoot as many people as possible in a Copenhagen building housing the newsroom of a paper that published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

2011: North Koreans march by the thousands to their capital’s landmarks to mourn Kim Jong Il, many crying uncontrollably in grief over the death of their “Dear Leader”.

2013: Egypt’s military-backed authorities step up their crackdown on liberal icons of the 2011 uprising against President Hosni Mubarak with security forces storming the headquarters of a rights group and arresting six activists.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Su Tung-p’o, Chinese poet (1036-1101); Leonid I Brezhnev, Soviet Communist Party chief (1906-1982); Jean Genet, French writer (1910-1986); Robert Urich, US actor (1946-2002); Jennifer Beals, US actress (1963- ); Jake Gyllenhaal, US actor (1980- )

— AP