Today is the 285th day of 2018. There are 80 days left in the year.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

1997: Cuban President Fidel Castro appoints his brother Raul as successor.

OTHER EVENTS

1492: Christopher Columbus makes his first landfall in the New World, in present-day Bahamas.

1822: Brazil becomes independent of Portugal.

1908: South Africa Constitutional Convention meets in Durban.

1915: English nurse Edith Cavell is executed by the Germans in occupied Belgium during World War I.

1933: Bank robber John Dillinger escapes from a jail in Ohio with the help of his gang.

1934: Peter II becomes King of Yugoslavia following the assassination of his father, King Alexander.

1938: Japanese troops seize Canton, severing the railway to the temporary Chinese capital in Wuhan.

1942: US forces defeat the Japanese in Battle of Cape Esperance on Guadalcanal in World War II.

1945: Allied Control Council in Germany orders dissolution of Nazi Party after World War II.

1951: Under attack by French planes, the Viet Minh rebels suffer one of their worst defeats of Vietnam’s civil war with 1,200 dead and 5,000 captured, in an attempt to take Nghialo.

1956: UK tells Israel the British will assist Jordan if Israel attacks that country.

1960: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev upsets the decorum of UN General Assembly by pounding the desk with his shoe during a dispute.

1964: US forces take control in South Vietnam, ousting Government of Major General Nguyen Khanh.

1973: US President Richard Nixon nominates House of Representatives Minority Leader Gerald R Ford to succeed Spiro T Agnew as vice-president. Agnew resigned after the Justice Department revealed he had taken kickbacks.

1975: Pope Paul VI canonises an Irish Archbishop Oliver Plunkett, who was executed by the British in 1681.

1991: Pope John Paul II makes his second visit to Brazil in an effort to renew interest in the Roman Catholic Church as it is losing many Brazilian adherents to Protestant groups and African mystical cults.

1992: A strong earthquake near Cairo kills 450 people and injures 4,000.

1993: German Chancellor Helmut Kohl pledges to move most of nation’s Government to Berlin from Bonn, the current capital, by the end of the year 2000.

1998: Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic agrees to withdraw his forces from Kosovo, initiate peace negotiations with ethnic Albanians, and allow international observers to ensure UN demands are met.

1999: A military coup throws Pakistan into political disarray as conflict with India continues over the disputed Kashmir territory. Army Chief General Pervez Musharraf becomes the new leader and promises to hold elections.

2000: Seventeen sailors are killed in a suicide bomb attack on the US destroyer Cole in Yemen.

2001: The United Nations and its secretary general, Kofi Annan, win the Nobel Peace Prize.

2002: A bomb explodes in a resort area on the Indonesian island of Bali, destroying two nightclubs, killing more than 180 people and wounding nearly 300 others.

2007: Former US Vice-President Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

2009: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows never to allow Israeli leaders or soldiers to stand trial on war crimes charges over their actions during a military offensive in the Gaza Strip, denouncing a UN report in a keynote address to Parliament.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

England’s King Edward VI (1537-1553); Pedro I, first emperor of Brazil (1798-1834); James Ramsey MacDonald, British prime minister (1865-1937); Edith Stein, German Roman Catholic saint (Saint Teresa Benedicta Of The Cross) (1891-1942); Ralph Vaughan Williams, English composer (1872-1958); Luciano Pavarotti, Italian tenor (1935-2007), Kirk Cameron, US actor (1970- )

— AP