Today is the 165th day of 2019. There are 200 days left in the year

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1993: Tansu Ciller becomes Turkey’s first female prime minister after being elected leader of the centre-right True Path Party.

OTHER EVENTS

1775: The Continental Army, forerunner of the United States Army, is created.

1777: The Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, adopts the original design of the Stars and Stripes, specifying a flag containing 13 red and white stripes and 13 stars.

1801: Former American Revolutionary War general and notorious turncoat Benedict Arnold dies in London.

1922: Warren G Harding becomes the first US president heard on radio, as Baltimore station WEAR broadcast his speech dedicating the Francis Scott Key memorial at Fort McHenry.

1934: Max Baer defeats Primo Carnera with an 11th-round TKO to win the world heavyweight boxing championship in Long Island City, New York.

1940: German troops enter Paris during World War II; the same day, the Nazis begin transporting prisoners to the Auschwitz (OWSH’-vitz) concentration camp in German-occupied Poland.

1943: The US Supreme Court, in West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, ruled 6-3 that public school students could not be forced to salute the flag of the United States.

1949: Vietnamese state is established at Saigon under former emperor Bao Dai.

1954: President Dwight D Eisenhower signs a measure adding the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.

1967: US Mariner spacecraft is launched toward Venus to discover if the planet can support life.

1972: The US Environmental Protection Agency orders a ban on domestic use of the pesticide DDT, to take effect at year’s end.

1982: Argentine forces surrender to British troops on the disputed Falkland Islands.

1985: The 17-day hijack ordeal of TWA Flight 847 begins as a pair of Lebanese Shiite Muslim extremists seize the jetliner shortly after takeoff from Athens, Greece.

1990: The US Supreme Court upholds, 6-3, police checkpoints that examined drivers for signs of intoxication.

1993: Prince Norodom Sihanouk is reinstated as Cambodian head of state.

1994: Iraq’s trade minister warns that farmers who do not sell their grain harvests to the state will have their hands cut off.

1997: Pol Pot is reported in Cambodia to be fleeing from the Khmer Rouge guerrillas he once commanded.

1999: NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo discover the first mass grave, believed to contain 81 bodies, as Serb troops withdraw leaving the houses of ethnic Albanians in flames.

2000: In the biggest step toward peace since the end of the war, the leaders of North and South Korea sign an agreement to work for reconciliation and reunification.

2003: East Timor approves a $1.5-billion natural gas development plan for a pipeline to be built. It will be the largest source of income for impoverished East Timor.

2005: President Thabo Mbeki fires his deputy and heir apparent who was implicated in a corruption scandal, throwing open the question of who will become the next leader of South Africa when Mbeki steps down in 2009.

2006: More than 1,000 Indonesian villagers are forced to flee Mount Merapi’s slopes after searing hot gas and debris erupts from the volcano. US President George W Bush, just back from a surprise visit to Iraq, dismisses calls for a US withdrawal as election-year politics and refused to give a timetable or benchmark for success that would allow troops to come home.

2009: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorses a Palestinian state beside Israel, reversing himself in the face of US pressure but attaching conditions such as demilitarisation that Palestinians swiftly reject.

2010: Iraq’s new parliament convenes for just under 20 minutes in what is little more than a symbolic inaugural session because of unresolved differences over key government positions three months after inconclusive elections.

2011: President Barack Obama makes a four-hour visit to Puerto Rico, becoming the first president since John F Kennedy to make an official visit to the US territory. The long-delayed, problem-plagued musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark officially opens on Broadway.

2015: Thousands of Syrians cut through a border fence and cross over into Turkey, fleeing intense fighting in northern Syria between Kurdish fighters and jihadis. Inbee Park shot a final round 68 and finished at 19-under par to win the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship for the third consecutive year and retake the No 1 ranking in women’s golf.

2017: A rifle-wielding gunman opens fire on Republican lawmakers at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, wounding House Whip Steve Scalise and several others; the assailant dies in a battle with police. Fire rips through the 24-story Grenfell Tower in West London, killing 71 people.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Harriet Beecher Stowe, US writer (1811-1896); John Bartlett, English writer/editor of Familiar Quotations (1820-1905); Gene Barry, US actor (1919-2009-); Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Argentine-born revolutionary (1928-1967); Jerzy Kosinski, Polish-born writer (1933-1991); Donald Trump, US president/TV personality (1946- ); Boy George, British pop singer (1961- ); Yasmine Bleeth, US actress (1968- ); Steffi Graf, German tennis champion (1969- ).

— AP