Today is the 356th day of 2017. There are 9 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1984: New York City resident Bernhard Goetz shoots four black youths on a Manhattan subway, claiming they were about to rob him.

OTHER EVENTS

1636: Archduke Ferdinand, son of the Emperor, is elected leader of the Romans.

1793: Napoleon Bonaparte, aged 24, is promoted to brigadier general in recognition of his decisive part in the capture of Toulon from British forces.

1807: US Congress passes the Embargo Act, designed to force peace between Britain and France by cutting off all trade with Europe.

1905: Insurrection of Moscow workers; Revolution in Persia begins.

1963: Greek liner Laconia catches fire and sinks in North Atlantic; 150 people die.

1985: Winnie Mandela, defying expulsion order, is arrested by police who drag her from her home in Soweto, South Africa.

1989: Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is toppled in an uprising. He and his wife Elena flee Bucharest, Romania.

1990: Lech Walesa is sworn in as Poland’s first popularly elected president.

1991: Twenty-one US sailors drown when an Israeli ferry taking them from shore capsizes; the body of Lt Col William R Higgins, an American hostage murdered by his captors, is found dumped along a highway in Lebanon.

1992: A Libyan Boeing 727 on a domestic flight crashes, killing all 157 people aboard.

1993: Alina Fernandez Revuelta, daughter of Cuban President Fidel Castro, leaves Cuba and is granted political asylum in the United States.

1994: Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi resigns over a bribery scandal after seven months at head of conservative coalition.

1996: In a “Christmas gesture”, Tupac Amaru rebels free 225 hostages from the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima, Peru, but keep 140.

1998: Israel’s Parliament votes overwhelmingly for early elections, signalling the demise of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ailing hard-line Government and effectively freezing the already troubled peace process with the Palestinians.

2001: Passengers and crew aboard an American Airlines jet en route to Miami subdue Briton Richard Reid as he tries to detonate explosives hidden in his shoes.

2003: The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Boston pays the 542 plaintiffs who agreed to a sexual abuse settlement with the archdiocese. The archdiocese will sell church property to fund the part of the $85-million settlement not covered by insurers.

2004: Saudi Arabia announces it is withdrawing its ambassador to Libya in what the kingdom called a measured response to reports Tripoli had plotted to assassinate its crown prince.

2006: The Roman Catholic Church denies a religious funeral for paralysed Italian author Piergiorgio Welby, who died after a doctor disconnected his respirator saying it would treat his public wish to “end his life”. The Vatican calls it an apparent suicide.

2007: Guatemalan congressman-elect Marco Antonio Xicay of the conservative Patriotic Party is shot to death by unidentified attackers outside a popular resort in the country.

2008: Thailand’s revered monarch urges the new government to make peace its priority, breaking months of silence about the political turmoil that shut down Bangkok’s airports and sparked deadly violence in the streets.

2010: Iraq’s Christian leaders call off Christmas celebrations amid new al-Qaeda threats on the tiny community still terrified from a bloody siege on a Baghdad church.

2012: Egypt’s Islamist-backed constitution heads toward approval in a final round of voting, but the deep divisions it has opened up threaten to fuel continued turmoil.

2013: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch who crossed President Vladimir Putin and ended up in jail for a decade, says he plans to devote his life to securing the freedom of the country’s political prisoners.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Jean Racine, French dramatist (1639-1699); Thomas Higginson, US abolitionist (1823-1911); Giacomo Puccini, Italian composer (1858-1924); Dame Peggy Ashcroft, English actress (1907-1991); Barbara Billingsley, US actress (1915-2010); Robin Gibb (1949-2012) and twin Maurice Gibb (1949-2003), Anglo-Australian founding members of the Bee Gees; Vanessa Paradis, French singer and model (1972- ); Ralph Fiennes, British actor (1962- )

— AP