Today is the 50th day of 2018. There are 315 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1996: The World Health Organization confirms that the Ebola virus killed 13 villagers in Gabon.

OTHER EVENTS

1618: Peace of Madrid is ratified, ending war between Venice and Austria.

1674: Treaty of Westminster is signed, whereby Britain withdraws support for French in war against Dutch.

1797: Pope Pius VI, by Treaty of Tolentino, cedes Romagna, Bologna and Ferrara to France, as Napoleon Bonaparte advances through Tyrol to Vienna.

1878: American inventor Thomas Edison receives a patent for his phonograph.

1881: Kansas becomes the first US state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.

1942: First Japanese attack on Australian mainland in World War II when aircraft attack Darwin and nearby military bases killing 243, sinking eight ships and destroying 23 aircraft.

1945: During World War II, 30,000 US Marines land on Iwo Jima, where they encounter ferocious resistance from Japanese forces before taking control of the island.

1951: A popular revolution in Nepal overthrows the 104-year rule of the Rana political dynasty and restores the royal family’s power.

1963: US President John F Kennedy says Soviet Union has agreed to withdraw several thousand of its 17,000 troops from Cuba.

1986: The US Senate approves a treaty outlawing genocide, 37 years after the pact had first been submitted for ratification.

1990: About 500 protesters break into government headquarters in Bucharest, Romania, calling for resignation of President Ion Iliescu.

1991: Boris Yeltsin calls for the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev, saying Gorbachev is sacrificing reform for increased personal power.

1993: A packed ferry carrying up to 1,500 people sinks in stormy seas off Haiti, and only 285 people are known to have survived.

1995: Dozens are injured when landowners attack hundreds of parishioners guarding the cathedral in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico, accusing their bishop of fomenting the Zapatista rebellion.

1997: Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who guided the country from political chaos and economic ruin toward prosperity in the post-Mao era, dies in Beijing at age 92.

2001: Clashes between ethnic Albanian rebels and Serbian security forces flare in Lucane, Yugoslavia — a tense southern region bordering Kosovo — a day after an explosion rips through a police van killing three Serb officers.

2005: A private banker who had millions hidden in his home in Ireland is freed without immediately being charged, as police search financial records nationwide for clues into an alleged Irish Republican Army money-laundering ring and links to a massive Belfast bank robbery.

2006: Israel’s Cabinet approves an immediate freeze on the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax money to the Palestinians in its first response to the takeover of the Palestinian Parliament by the militant group Hamas.

2007: Two bombs explode on a train headed from India to Pakistan, sparking a fire that kills 66 people in an attack officials say was aimed at undermining the peace process between the rivals.

2008: An ailing Fidel Castro resigns as Cuba’s president after nearly a half-century in power.

2009: A jury in Moscow votes unanimously to acquit three men in the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

2012: Iran halts oil shipments to Britain and France in an apparent pre-emptive blow against the European Union after the bloc imposed sanctions on Iran’s crucial fuel exports.

2013: The United Nations says the number of US drone strikes in Afghanistan had risen sharply in 2012.

2011. A bail hearing beginsin Pretoria, South Africa, for double amputee Olympian Oscar Pistorius, charged with killing Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day; the defence says Pistorius had mistaken his girlfriend for an intruder while prosecutors said he had deliberately opened fire on Steenkamp as she cowered behind a locked bathroom door.

2014: President Barack Obama urges Ukraine to avoid violence against peaceful protesters or face consequences, as the United States considers joining European partners to impose sanctions aimed at ending deadly street clashes.

2017: A SpaceX rocket soars from NASA’s long-idled moonshot pad, sending up space station supplies from the exact spot where astronauts embarked on the lunar landings nearly a half-century earlier. Three former elite US gymnasts, including 2000 Olympian Jamie Dantzscher, appear on CBS’ 60 Minutes to say they were sexually abused by Dr Larry Nassar, a volunteer team physician for USA Gymnastics.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

David Garrick, English author-dramatist (1717-1779); Luigi Boccherini, Italian composer (1743-1805); Sir William McMahon, former Australian prime minister (1908-1988); Merle Oberon, British actress (1911-1979); Smokey Robinson, US singer (1940- ); Michael Nader, US actor (1945- ); England’s Prince Andrew (1960- ); Seal, US singer (1963-); Benicio Del Toro, actor (1967- )

— AP