Today is the 114th day of 2019. There are 251 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2003: Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the former wife of Nelson Mandela, is convicted of fraud and theft by a regional court in Pretoria, South Africa, and sentenced to five years in prison. Madikizela-Mandela was charged with running fraudulent schemes to obtain about $125,000 in bank loans and insurance payments.

OTHER EVENTS

1617: Concino Concini, Marquis d’Angre, is assassinated by order of France’s King Louis XIII, and Charles d’Albert, Duke of Luynes, takes charge of Government of France.

1704: The first regularly issued American newspaper starts publication.

1792: Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle composes France’s national anthem, La Marseillaise.

1877: US troops are ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North’s post-Civil War rule in the South.

1898: Spain declares war on United States after receiving US ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.

1915: The Ottoman Turkish Empire begins the brutal mass deportation of Armenians during World War I.

1953: British statesman Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

1967: Soviet Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed when parachute straps of his spacecraft get entangled, and it plunges to earth.

1969: Lebanon’s Premier Rashid Karami resigns amid dispute over government’s restrictions on Palestinian guerrillas.

1970: China launches its first satellite.

1971: Soviet cosmonauts link up with unmanned satellite prior to attempt to build world’s first orbiting space laboratory.

1990: The US space shuttle Discovery takes the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.

1993: Commandos break into the cockpit of a commandeered Indian Airlines plane in Amritsar, India, shoot dead the lone hijacker and free all 141 people aboard.

1994: Cuban exiles are received by President Fidel Castro, the man some have long wanted to overthrow.

1997: Islamist militants armed with sabres and axes strike two villages in Algeria, butchering 47 people in a pre-election terror wave that leaves an estimated 420 dead in a few weeks.

1998: In front of a cheering crowd, 22 Rwandans convicted of genocide are executed by firing squad in Kigali.

2000: Iranian hardliners close down 14 pro-democracy publications in a strike against a major pillar of the reform movement.

2001: A jury is chosen in the murder trial of a former Ku Klux Klansman charged 38 years after the church bombing that killed four black girls in Birmingham, Alabama.

2006: Three bombings hit an Egyptian beach resort popular with foreigners, killing at least 21 people and wounding more than 60 a day after Osama bin Laden issues a taped warning against Westerners.

2007: Mexico City lawmakers vote to legalise abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

2009: Mexico shuts down schools, museums, libraries and state-run theatres across its overcrowded capital in hopes of containing a swine flu outbreak that authorities say killed at least 20 people.

2011: A civil rights group says at least 500 people died in religious rioting that followed Nigeria’s presidential election.

2012: President Barack Obama marks the anniversary of the massacre of Armenians in Turkey nearly a century ago by calling it “one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century”. But as in previous years, he stops short of calling the killings genocide.

2013: In Bangladesh, a shoddily constructed eight-storey commercial building housing garment factories collapses, killing more than 1,100 people.

2017: Astronaut Peggy Whitson breaks the US record for most time in space and talked-up Mars during a congratulatory call from President Donald Trump; the International Space Station’s commander surpasses the record of 534 days, two hours and 48 minutes for most accumulated time in space by an American.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Edmund Cartwright, English inventor of first power loom (1743-1823); Anthony Trollope, English novelist (1814-1882); Shirley MacLaine, US actress-dancer-author (1934- ); Sue Grafton, US mystery/crime novelist (1940-2017); Barbra Streisand, US actress-entertainer (1942- ); Eric Bogosian, US actor (1953- ); Cedric the Entertainer, US comedian (1964- ); Kelly Clarkson, US pop/rock singer (1982- )

— AP