Today is the 262nd day of 2019. There are 103 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1959: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, on a visit to Los Angeles, reportedly becomes furious when informed that he can’t visit Disneyland for security reasons.

OTHER EVENTS

1356: The English under Edward, the Black Prince, defeat the French at Poitiers and take King John II prisoner.

1656: English fleet under Robert Blake captures Spanish treasure ships off Cadiz, Spain.

1777: Americans defeat a British force at the First Battle of Saratoga, a turning point in the American War of Independence.

1783: At Versailles near Paris, the Montgoslfier brothers send up the first balloon with live passengers — a sheep, a rooster, and a duck.

1941: Germans take Kiev in the Soviet Union.

1944: Soviet Union and Finland sign peace treaty in Moscow, ending three-year war.

1955: Argentina’s President Juan Peron is ousted after revolts by army and navy.

1978: Egypt’s Cabinet unanimously approves President Anwar Sadat’s Camp David agreement to sign a peace treaty with Israel within three months.

1983: Caribbean islands St Kitts and Nevis become independent of Britain.

1985: An earthquake under the Pacific coast shakes Mexico City, killing 10,000 people.

1994: US troops peacefully enter Haiti to enforce the return of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

1995: An Iranian flight attendant hijacks a Kish Air Boeing 707 to Israel during a flight from Tehran. The plane is returned to Tehran with 174 passengers and crew.

2001: Islamic clerics urge terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden to leave Afghanistan voluntarily, but set no deadline for him. The United States threatens to attack the Taliban, if they don’t turn in bin Laden.

2002: Israeli forces demolish 20 buildings and other structures in Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat’s headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah after Palestinian suicide attacks kill seven Israelis.

2003: Venezuela suspends oil shipments to the Dominican Republic because of a plot being hatched there to overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Venezuela had sold about 110,000 barrels of oil a day to the Dominican Republic, making up 70 per cent of that country’s oil supply.

2004: Hu Jintao becomes the undisputed leader of China as the country completes its first orderly transfer of power in the communist era with the departure of former President Jiang Zemin.

2008: China’s food safety crisis widens after the industrial chemical melamine is found in milk produced by three of the country’s leading dairy companies.

2013: Pope Francis warns that the Catholic Church’s structure might “fall like a house of cards” if it does not balance its divisive rules about abortion, gays, and contraception with the greater need to make it a merciful, more welcoming place for all.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

France’s King Henry III (1551-1589); Jean-Baptiste Joseph Delambre, French astronomer (1749-1822); George Cadbury, British chocolate manufacturer (1839-1922); William Golding, British writer and Nobel laureate (1911-1993); Jeremy Irons, English actor (1948- ); Twiggy Lawson, British actress/former model (1949- ); Trisha Yearwood, US country singer (1964- ); Jimmy Fallon, US actor/comedian (1974-)

— AP