Today is the 59th day of 2019. There are 306 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1996: Britain’s Princess Diana agrees to divorce Prince Charles. (Their 15-year marriage officially ended in August 1996; Diana died in a car crash in Paris a year after that.)

OTHER EVENTS

1942: Japanese forces land in Java, Indonesia, in World War II.

1947: Taiwanese rebel against Nationalist forces moving in from mainland China. Thousands are killed in a month of fighting.

1951: A Senate committee headed by Estes Kefauver, a Tennessee Democrat, issues a preliminary report saying at least two major crime syndicates were operating in the United States.

1962: United States announces that new atomic tests will be conducted in atmosphere near Johnson Island in Pacific.

1974: United States and Egypt re-establish diplomatic relations after seven-year breach.

1975: More than 40 people are killed in London’s Underground when a subway train smashes into the end of a tunnel.

1990: Soviet legislature passes a landmark law allowing citizens to acquire land and bequeath it to their children.

1992: UN Security Council approves a 22,000-strong peacekeeping force for Cambodia.

1993: Four US federal agents and six members of a Christian sect are killed when authorities raid the sect headquarters in Waco, Texas. A 51-day stand-off ensues, ending with the deaths of about 80 sect members in a fire.

1996: Daiwa Bank Ltd of Japan agrees to plead guilty to a criminal cover-up of US$1.1 billion in bond-trading losses and pay US$340 million in fines, settling one of history’s biggest banking frauds.

1997: An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 shakes western Pakistan, killing at least 35 people.

1998: Yugoslav security forces launch an offensive to halt growing resistance to Serb rule in Kosovo province. At least 20 people die on the first day.

1999: A roadside bomb kills four Israelis, including a brigadier general, in Lebanon, and Israel launches retaliatory airstrikes against Shiite guerillas.

2003: A US District Court finds reputed Ku Klux Klan member Ernest Avants guilty of aiding and abetting the 1966 murder of Ben Chester White, a 67-year-old black farm worker in Jackson, Mississippi.

2004: An Israeli helicopter fires two missiles at a car in the Gaza Strip, killing three people, including an Islamic Jihad militant Ayman Dahdouh.

2006: Officials announce finding the deadly strain of bird flu in a cat in Germany, the first time the virus has been identified in an animal other than a bird in central Europe.

2009: With his nation’s economy in shambles, President Robert Mugabe throws himself a lavish birthday party and calls on Zimbabwe’s last white farmers to leave.

2010: Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, charges that the US and its allies are behind the UN nuclear watchdog agency’s claim that Iran may be making nuclear bombs, despite its repeated denials.

2011: The United States and European allies intensify efforts to isolate Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, redoubling demands for him to step down, questioning his mental state and warning that those who stay loyal to him risk losing their wealth and being prosecuted for human rights abuses.

2012: Helicopters ferry food, phones and flashlights to more than 1,000 passengers and crew stuck aboard a disabled cruise ship that was being towed to the Seychelles Islands through waters prowled by pirates.

2013: Pope Benedict XVI becomes the first pope in 600 years to resign, ending an eight-year pontificate shaped by struggles to move the Roman Catholic church past sex abuse scandals and to reawaken Christianity in an indifferent world.

Raphael, Italian artist (1483-1520); Michael Montaigne, French essayist (1533-1592); Gavin MacLeod, US actor (1931- ); Bernadette Peters, US actress/singer (1948- ); Kelly Bishop, US actress (1944- ).