Today is the 38th day of 2018. There are 327 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1962: US President John F Kennedy imposes a full trade embargo on Cuba.

OTHER EVENTS

1816: Congress of New Granada entrusts Simon Bolivar with political and military control in invasion of Venezuela from Haiti.

1831: Belgian Constitution is proclaimed.

1943: The US Government abruptly announces that wartime rationing of shoes made of leather would go into effect in two days, limiting consumers to buying three pairs per person per year. (Rationing is lifted in October 1945.)

1944: German forces launch assault on Allies’ Anzio bridgehead in World War II.

1947: British proposal for dividing Palestine into Arab and Jewish zones with administration as trusteeship is rejected by Arabs and Jews.

1964: Rock ‘n’ roll’s British invasion begins when the Beatles are greeted by thousands of screaming fans on their arrival in New York for their first American tour.

1969: Nigerian planes bomb and strafe crowded market in village in rebellious Biafra, killing more than 200 people.

1971: US Apollo 14 astronauts speed toward splashdown in Pacific Ocean after their visit to moon.

1974: Britain grants independence to small Caribbean island of Grenada.

1984: Space shuttle astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L Stewart go on first untethered spacewalk.

1986: Haiti’s President for Life Jean-Claude Duvalier goes into exile, ending 29-year family dynasty in the Caribbean republic.

1991: Rev Jean-Bertrand Aristide is sworn in as Haiti’s first democratically elected president. Iraq fires Scud missile at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but US Patriot missile destroys it.

1992: Pakistan for the first time acknowledges its ability to make nuclear weapons.

1993: Former Premier Laurent Fabius of France asks to be put on trial to end allegations he was responsible for infecting hundreds of haemophiliacs with AIDS-tainted blood.

1994: Guerrillas kill four Israeli soldiers in an ambush in Lebanon that draws retaliatory air and artillery strikes.

1995: Ramzi Yousef, the alleged mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is arrested in Islamabad, Pakistan.

1996: A charter jetliner carrying German tourists crashes into the Caribbean minutes after taking off from Puerto Plata, the Dominican Republic, killing 189 aboard.

1998: A Swiss police officer is convicted of passing lists of suspected Islamic militants to Algerian authorities. At least four people on the lists were detained and tortured when they returned to Algeria.

1999: King Hussein dies of cancer after nearly half a century on the throne of Jordan; he was succeeded by his eldest son, Abdullah.

2001: Former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returns to power in Haiti. Aristide won a second term as president in November 2000 elections that were boycotted by major Opposition parties.

2003: A car bomb explodes at a club in Bogota, Colombia, killing at least 36 people and wounding more than 160. The Government blames the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which denies responsibility.

2005: Secretary General Kofi Annan suspends the head of the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq and a senior UN official who dealt with contracts following an independent investigation that accused them of misconduct.

2007: The Episcopal Church names a woman, Rev Nerva Cot Aguilera, as bishop in Cuba, the first such appointment by the church in the developing world.

2008: Congo arrests and turns over for trial Mathieu Ngudjolo, 37, an army colonel and former rebel leader accused of leading a 2003 attack on a village in the country’s lawless east that left 200 civilians dead. A gunman opens fire at a Kirkwood, Missouri, council meeting, killing three city officials and two police officers before being fatally shot by law enforcement. After two months of delay, shuttle Atlantis blasts into orbit with Europe’s gift to the international space station, a $2-billion science lab named Columbus.

2010: Pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych declares victory in Ukraine’s presidential contest even though exit polls show a very tight race.

2013: Ireland clinches a long-sought agreement with the European Central Bank to restructure the loans used to bail out its failing banks, a deal expected to reduce the national debt by euro 20 billion ($27 billion).

2017: Charter school advocate Betsy DeVos wins confirmation as education secretary by the slimmest of margins, pushed to approval only by the historic tie-breaking vote of Vice-President Mike Pence.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Sir Thomas More, English Lord Chancellor and writer (1478-1535); Charles Dickens, English novelist (1812-1870); Dmitri Mendeleyev, Russian chemist (1834-1907); Sinclair Lewis, US writer (1885-1951); Aisingyoro Henry Puyi, last emperor of China (1906-1967); Sir Russell Drysdale, Australian artist (1912-1981); Earl King, US blues singer/guitarist (1934-2003); Garth Brooks, US country singer (1962- ); Chris Rock, US actor/comedian (1965- )

— AP