Today is the 44th day od 2019. There are 321 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2006: Denmark’s prime minister says the country’s image in the Muslim world has been tainted by false images and rumours surrounding the Prophet Mohammed drawing controversy and insists the country is tolerant and open to all faiths.

OTHER EVENTS

1542: England’s Queen Catherine Howard is executed for treason on the orders of her husband Henry VIII.

1601: John Lancaster leads first East India Company voyage from London.

1633: Italian astronomer Galileo arrives in Rome and is detained by Roman Catholic Inquisition.

1635: Boston Latin School, the United States’ oldest secondary school, is founded.

1689: English Parliament adopts a Bill of Rights.

1795: The first US state university opens in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

1820: Duc de Berry, heir to the French throne, is assassinated by an anti-royalist.

1856: Britain annexes Oudh, in India, increasing further hostility to British rule.

1920: The League of Nations recognises Switzerland’s neutrality.

1945: Allied forces capture Budapest, Hungary, in World War II. US warplanes firebomb Dresden, Germany, wiping out the city and killing more than 35,000 civilians.

1960: France explodes its first atomic bomb.

1961: UN Security Council urges use of force to prevent civil war in the Congo.

1968: Ten thousand US troops are in the process of being transported to South Vietnam on speed-up basis as fighting increases in that country.

1975: Turkish Cypriots proclaim separate administration in Turkish-occupied northern part of Cyprus.

1976: Nigerian junta leader General Murtala Ramat Muhammad is assassinated in a coup attempt.

1989: Soviet Red Army leaves Afghan capital of Kabul.

1990: Britain, France, Soviet Union, United States, and two Germanys announce two-stage plan for talks leading to German reunification.

1991: US planes destroy bunker in Baghdad that allies identified as military site, but apparently contained Iraqi civilians, with reported death toll ranging from 40 to 500.

1992: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat claims tape in which he purportedly made slanderous comments about Jews was doctored.

1993: Angolan Government troops break into UNITA rebel-held highlands in an attempt to open a supply corridor to the embattled city of Huambo.

1994: Somali gunmen kidnap two Italian aid workers and an Egyptian UN peacekeeper is killed.

1995: Peru announces it has captured the last Ecuadorean stronghold in Peruvian territory and declares a unilateral ceasefire in the Andean border war.

1996: Israeli troops seal off the West Bank and Gaza to prevent terrorist attacks. The restrictions last for years.

1997: Rebels, under Laurent Kabila, take Zairian town of Faradje while advancing on the country’s third-largest city, Kisangani.

1998: Nigerian-led peacekeepers trying to oust Sierra Leone’s military Government capture the parliament building in Freetown.

1999: Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire suspected of being behind the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, is reported to have disappeared from his base in Afghanistan.

2000: Serbia announces it will demand compensation at an international court from those responsible for a cyanide spill that contaminated a major river, destroying most aquatic life.

2001: A strong earthquake rattles El Salvador, sending tremors through the Central American country still recovering from a January quake that killed hundreds.

2002: John Walker Lindh, a US citizen captured fighting alongside Afghanistan’s deposed Taliban militia, pleads not guilty to 10 counts of conspiring to kill Americans and abetting terrorist groups.

2005: Troops in helicopters bring badly needed relief supplies to villages obliterated by floods in south-western Pakistan, as the nationwide death toll from the disaster climbs past 350.

2007: North Korea agrees with US and four regional powers on nuclear disarmament plan.

2008: One of the world’s most wanted and elusive terrorists, Imad Mughniyeh, is killed by a car bomb in Syria nearly 15 years after dropping almost entirely from sight. Iran and the militant group Hezbollah blame Israel, which denies a role.

2009: A female suicide bomber targets Shiite pilgrims in Musayyib, killing at least 40.

2011: President Hugo Chavez says that he has no intention of ceasing his efforts to make Venezuela a socialist country, and he expresses confidence that his allies would take the reins of his “Bolivarian Revolution” if he died or decided to step down.

2012: Israel blames Iran for bomb attacks on its diplomats’ cars in India and Georgia, heightening concerns that the Jewish State was moving closer to striking its arch-enemy.

2013: A weary Pope Benedict XVI begins a long farewell to his flock, celebrating his final public Mass as pontiff.

2014: The largest solar power plant in the world — thousands of mirrors sprawling across roughly five square miles (13 sq kilometres) of the Mojave Desert — opens in the western US state of Nevada.

TODAY’S SBIRTHDAYS

Charles Maurice Talleyrand-Perigord, French statesman (1754-1838); Eileen Farrell, US soprano (1920-2002); Kim Novak, US actress (1933- ); Stockard Channing, US actress (1944- ); Jerry Springer, US talk show host (1944- ); Peter Gabriel, British singer (1950- ); Robbie Williams, British singer (1974- )

— AP