Today is the 211th day of 2018. There are 154 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1945: The USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian, is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Only 316 out of 1,196 men on board survive in shark-infested waters.

OTHER EVENTS

1419: Czech Hussites throw seven members of the Prague town council from a window and start a rebellion. King Wenceslas IV dies of a heart attack upon hearing of the incident.

1619: America’s first representative assembly convenes in Jamestown, Virginia.

1646: French troops, aided by the Swedish army, invade Bavaria to bring Thirty Years’ War to a close.

1907: Elections are held in the Philippines for the country’s first assembly. The new 80-member assembly is directly elected by a restricted electorate, making it the first elective legislative body in south-east Asia.

1916: German saboteurs blow up munitions plant on Black Tom Island, near Jersey City, New Jersey, before United States’ entry in World War I.

1930: Host Uruguay wins first soccer World Cup, at Montevideo’s Centenario Stadium, beating Argentina 4-2. Kurds stage uprising on Persian-Turkish frontier.

1948: Hungarian leader Zoltan Tildy is forced to resign. Amnesty is proclaimed in Philippines for Huk rebels, but they refuse to comply.

1953: Britain signs alliance with Libya.

1971: US Apollo 15 astronauts David R Scott and James B Irwin land on the moon.

1974: Greece, Turkey and Britain sign declaration for ceasefire agreement on Cyprus.

1982: Panamanian President Aristides Royo Sanchez resigns two years before the end of his six-year term under pressure from the country’s military leaders.

1989: Poland’s Government announces controversial programme to end food price controls and meat rationing.

1990: On his fourth day being held hostage, Prime Minister Arthur N R Robinson of Trinidad offers to resign, call elections, and grant his captors amnesty.

1991: UN weapons experts report finding 46,000 chemical weapons in Iraq, about four times what Baghdad had declared.

1993: Guards at a Lima, Peru, museum walk out with golden relics of the Incas — most of which they later melt down.

1998: Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic says a fierce offensive that took much of Kosovo back from ethnic Albanian separatists is over.

1999: The worst blackout in Taiwanese history cuts off electricity to 7 million households — one-third of the island — causing panic and fear that it might be under attack by China. A collapsed utility tower is the culprit and it is unrelated to recent tensions with the mainland.

2000: North and South Korea announce they will reopen border liaison offices and reconnect a rail line linking the two countries.

2002: President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwandan President Paul Kagame sign a peace agreement intended to bring an end to the devastating civil war that started in 1998.

2003: Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi acknowledges that Zahra Kazemi, a freelance photographer who held both Canadian and Iranian citizenship, was murdered while detained by the Iranian Government. Kazemi had been arrested June 23 for taking photographs of protesters in Tehran.

2006: Israeli missiles crush several buildings where Lebanese villagers are sleeping, killing at least 56 people — more than half of them children, in an attack against Hezbollah.

2007: Maharashtra State government bans domesticated elephants from India’s largest city, Mumbai, saying that forcing the animals to walk the city’s chaotic, crowded and polluted streets is an act of cruelty.

2008: A team of European scientists unveils a new method for extracting images hidden under old masters’ paintings, recreating a colour portrait of a woman’s face unseen since Vincent van Gogh painted over it in 1887.

2009: Iranian police fire tear gas and beat protesters to disperse thousands chanting “Neda lives!” at a memorial for victims of post-election violence held at the gravesite of the woman whose death made her a symbol of the pro-reform movement.

2010: President Nicolas Sarkozy says that he wants to revoke the French citizenship of immigrants who put the lives of police officers in danger, as part of a “national war” on delinquency.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Giorgio Vasari, Italian painter (1511-1574); Emily Bronte, British author (1818-1848); Henry Ford, US auto pioneer (1863-1947); Casey Stengel, US baseball player/manager (1891-1975); Henry Moore, British sculptor (1898-1986); Peter Bogdanovich, US producer/director (1939- ); Paul Anka, Canadian singer (1941- ); Arnold Schwarzenegger, US-Austrian actor/politician (1947- ); Laurence Fishburne, US actor (1961- ); Lisa Kudrow, US actress (1963- )

— AP