Today is the 275th day of 2019. There are 90 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2009: In a vote of high drama, the bustling Brazilian carnival city of Rio de Janeiro gets the 2016 Olympics, a first for South America.

OTHER EVENTS

1187: Besieged Crusader forces in Jerusalem capitulate to Muslim commander Saladin. The Christians retake the holy city in 1229.

1836: Charles Darwin returns to England from a trip to South America, where he documented animal and plant life for his book, On the Origin of Species.

1870: Rome becomes the capital of Italy.

1889: First Pan American Conference is held in Washington.

1918: King Faisal I enters Damascus to set up an independent Arab state.

1919: US President Woodrow Wilson suffers a stroke, leaving him partially paralysed.

1924: League of Nations adopts Geneva Protocol for peaceful settlement of international disputes.

1934: Royal Indian Navy is formed.

1940: HMS Empress of Britain, carrying child war refugees to Canada, is sunk during World War II.

1941: German army launches all-out drive against Moscow in World War II.

1944: Nazi troops crush the two-month-old Warsaw Uprising, during which 250,000 people are killed.

1950: The comic strip Peanuts, created by Charles M Schulz, is first published in nine US newspapers.

1958: The former French colony of Guinea in West Africa proclaims its independence.

1962: Egypt sends troops to Yemen to support republicans against Saudi-backed royalists.

1967: Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as an associate justice of the US Supreme Court; becoming the first African-American appointed to the highest US court.

1972: Denmark’s entrance into the European Economic Community is approved by almost two-thirds of voters in a referendum.

1977: Israel rejects joint US-Soviet declaration on aims of proposed Middle East peace conference.

1988: Pakistan’s Supreme Court orders that planned elections in November be open to all political parties.

1991: Haiti’s military chief advises ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to remain in exile.

1992: The UN Security Council passes a resolution to seize Iraqi oil assets currently frozen abroad. The impounded assets, valued between $500 million to $1 billion, are to help pay for UN disarmament, relief efforts and compensation for victims of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

1993: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan meet in Washington, DC, with US President Bill Clinton to normalise economic relations between their countries.

1994: US troops in Haiti raid weapons caches in Port-au-Prince, cracking down on violence initiated in previous days by paramilitary units linked to Haiti’s military-led de facto government.

1995: Director of Russia’s famed Kirov Ballet, Anatoly Malkov, is arrested for corruption and bribery running into millions of dollars. He later resigns.

2002: US President George W Bush reaches an agreement with the leaders of the US House of Representatives on a resolution authorising military action against Iraq.

2003: A US District Court judge declines to dismiss all charges against Sept 11 terrorist suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, and instead bars government prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in his case.

2004: Afghan intelligence agents backed by international peacekeepers arrest 25 people with alleged links to the Taliban and al-Qaeda in an early morning raid in eastern Kabul as the presidential election draws near.

2006: A gunman storms an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, killing five girls before committing suicide. It is the third deadly US school shooting in less than a week.

2007: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il welcomes South Korea’s president to Pyongyang for the start of the second-ever summit between the divided Koreas since World War II.

2008: After extensive repairs and improvements, the World War II aircraft carrier USS Intrepid returns to the Manhattan pier, where it has served for 24 years as a military and space museum.

2011: Syrian dissidents formally establish a broad-based national council designed to overthrow President Bashar Assad’s regime, which they accused of pushing the country to the brink of civil war.

2013: UN Security Council issues an urgent appeal for immediate access to all areas of Syria to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to millions of civilians enduring the 2 1/2-year-old conflict.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Richard III, king of England (1452-1485); Paul von Hindenburg, German president (1847-1934); Ferdinand Foch, French soldier (1851-1929); Mohandas K (Mahatma) Gandhi, Indian statesman-reformer (1869-1948); Groucho Marx, US comedian (1895-1977); Graham Greene, British writer (1904-1991), Don McLean, US singer (1945- ), Sting, British singer (1951- )