Today is the 222nd day of 2018. There are 143 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1977: US postal employee David Berkowitz is arrested after being accused of being the “Son of Sam” gunman responsible for six random slayings and wounding seven people. He is serving six consecutive terms of 25 years to life in state prison.

OTHER EVENTS

1628: The Swedish warship Vasa capsizes in Stockholm harbour on its maiden voyage. It is raised in 1961.

1741: Prussia’s King Frederick II takes Breslau in Poland.

1787: Turkey declares war on Russia, fearing designs on Georgia.

1792: French monarchy is overthrown when mobs in Paris attack palace of King Louis XVI.

1842: Lord Ashley’s Mine Act prohibits women and children under 10 from working underground in Britain.

1866: Bolivia cedes territory between Andes and Pacific Ocean to Chile.

1885: Leo Daft opens America’s first commercially operated electric streetcar in Baltimore.

1897: A young researcher at German chemical firm Bayer, Felix Hoffman, first synthesises acetylsalicylic acid, aspirin’s active ingredient.

1904: Japan’s navy destroys much of Russian fleet off Port Arthur.

1914: France declares war on Austria-Hungary at the start of World War I.

1919: Anglo-White Russian forces defeat Soviet forces in North Dvina.

1945: Japan offers to surrender in World War II if Emperor Hirohito is permitted to keep his throne.

1962: Soviet Union rejects proposed US inspection plan as part of any disarmament agreement.

1988: US President Ronald Reagan signs a measure providing US$20,000 payments to Japanese-Americans interned by the US Government during World War II.

1993: The United States says Bosnian Serbs could face a NATO air strike unless they abandon positions on two strategic mountains near Sarajevo. The Serbs evacuate four days later. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as the second female justice on the US Supreme Court.

1995: Two of Saddam Hussein’s daughters, their husbands and a group of army officers flee to Jordan. King Hussein grants them political asylum.

1996: Chechen rebels drive back Russian troops from the centre of Grozny and withstand barrages of Russian aircraft and artillery fire.

1997: Photos of British Princess Diana embracing film producer Dodi Fayed are published in the London Sunday Mirror, raising speculation about her future.

1998: More than 2,000 people die in flooding in China.

2002: Turkey’s economy minister, Kemal Dervis, resigns from the Government of ailing Premier Bulent Ecevit ahead of early November elections.

2008: At the Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps begins his long march toward eight gold medals by winning the 400-metre individual medley in 4:03.84 — smashing his own world record. Soul crooner Isaac Hayes, 65, dies in Memphis, Tennessee.

2013: A harrowing weeklong search for a missing California teenager ends when FBI agents rescue 16-year-old Hannah Anderson and shoot and kill 40-year-old James Lee DiMaggio at a campsite deep in the Idaho wilderness. (Authorities say in addition to kidnapping Hannah, DiMaggio killed her brother and mother at his home east of San Diego.)

2014: Israel and the Hamas militant group accept an Egyptian ceasefire proposal, clearing the way for a long-term truce to end a month of heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip that has taken nearly 2,000 lives.

2017: President Donald Trump, continuing his criticism of Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell following the failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, suggests that McConnell might have to rethink his future as majority leader unless he could deliver on Trump’s legislative priorities on health care, taxes and infrastructure. North Korea’s military describe as a “load of nonsense” Trump’s warning that the North would face “fire and fury” if it threatened the United States.