Today is the 169th day of 2019. There are 196 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2010: BP removes chief executive Tony Hayward from day-to-day oversight of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis, a day after he was pummelled by US lawmakers at a hearing.

OTHER EVENTS

1757: Holy Roman Empire forces defeat of Prussia’s King Frederick II in Seven Years War battle of Kollin, now in Czech Republic, and he loses 13,000 of 33,000 troops.

1779: French forces take St Vincent in West Indies from British.

1812: United States declares war against Britain because of restrictions imposed on shipping during the Napoleonic Wars.

1815: British under Duke of Wellington and Prussians under Gerhard von Blucher defeat France’s Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo.

1823: King John VI annuls Portuguese Constitution of 1822 after uprisings against his rule and the loss of Brazil.

1900: With the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion already under way, the dowager empress of China orders all foreigners killed.

1940: General Charles de Gaulle makes his famous BBC broadcast from London, in which he declares himself leader of the “Free French” and urges compatriots to resist Nazi occupation.

1940: Germans capture French port of Cherbourg.

1952: British announce plan to unite Rhodesia and Nyasaland — now Zimbabwe and Malawi — in Central African Federation.

1953: Egypt is proclaimed a republic with General M Naguib as president.

1961: Three princes of Laos meet in Zurich, Switzerland, and agree to form coalition government to unite the war-torn kingdom.

1965: Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky assumes office as premier of South Vietnam and vows to spur war against Viet Cong.

1975: Prince Faisal Ibn Musaed is publicly beheaded in Riyadh for the murder of his uncle, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

1985: US space shuttle Discovery, with a Saudi Arabian prince aboard as passenger, launches a satellite for Arab world.

1993: The UN Security Council approves sending 7,600 peacekeepers to six Bosnian cities.

1996: The UN Security Council lifts its embargo of heavy weapons against the former Yugoslav republics, following an arms control agreement in Bosnia.

1997: One of the most reviled figures of the century, the fugitive Cambodian Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, surrenders to his former comrades.

2000: Ethiopia and Eritrea agree to cease hostilities immediately in two-year-old border war that killed, wounded, and displaced thousands.

2001: Some 30,000 Syrian troops pull out of Beirut and redeploy after 25 years. The Syrians were invited into Lebanon in 1976 as part of an Arab peacekeeping force to quell a civil war.

2002: A Palestinian suicide bomber detonates explosives on a bus in Jerusalem, killing himself and at least 19 Israelis, in the deadliest attack in Jerusalem since 1996.

2004: European Union leaders agree on a first-ever constitution for their newly reunited continent, overcoming disputes about power-sharing and national sovereignty.

2008: Zhang Xiaoyan, a woman trapped under rubble for 50 hours in the May 12 earthquake in China, delivers a healthy baby girl in a touching coda to the massive tragedy that killed almost 70,000 people. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says he would bring Osama bin Laden to justice in a way that wouldn’t allow the terrorist mastermind to become a martyr, but that bin Laden might be killed if the US Government found him. (Bin Laden was tracked down and slain by US forces in May 2011 during Obama’s presidency.)

2012: Islamist candidate Mohammed Morsi claims a hollow victory in Egypt’s presidential election just hours after the country’s military rulers strip the office of its most important powers.

2013: The Taliban and the US say they will hold talks on finding a political solution to end nearly 12 years of war in Afghanistan, as the international coalition formally hands over control of the country’s security to the Afghan army and police.

2014: Iraq’s Shiite prime minister extends overtures to his Sunni and Kurdish political rivals as his forces battle Sunni militants over control of the nation’s largest oil refinery and a strategic city near the Syrian border.

2017: Charleena Lyles, a 30-year-old African American mother of four, is shot and killed by two white Seattle police officers after she called 911 to report a burglary; authorities said Lyles had pulled a knife on the officers. Voters give French President Emmanuel Macron’s fledgling party a solid victory in parliamentary elections.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Edward Scripps, US newspaper publisher (1854-1926); Anastasia, daughter of Russian czar Nicholas II (1901-1918); Paul McCartney, British singer (1942- ); Thabo Mbeki, South African president (1942- ); Roger Ebert, US film critic (1942-2013); Isabella Rossellini, Italian-born model-actress (1952- ); Tom Bailey, British singer (1957- ).

— AP