Today is the 301st day of 2019. There are 55 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2013: US student Amanda Knox’s defence gets a boost when a new DNA test on a kitchen knife fails to conclusively prove it was the murder weapon used to kill her British roommate.

OTHER EVENTS

1860: Abraham Lincoln is elected president of the United States.

1913: Mohandas K Gandhi is arrested as he leads a protest march of Indian miners in South Africa.

1942: Tidal wave kills 10,000 people in Bengal, India.

1955: South Africa quits the United Nations General Assembly and its committees for the rest of the 10th session after the assembly adopts a resolution expressing “concern” over South Africa’s apartheid policy.

1962: UN General Assembly calls for economic sanctions against South Africa because of its racial policies.

1970: Italy formally recognises China.

1971: The World Synod of Roman Catholic Bishops ends a stormy meeting at Vatican, divided on the question of whether married men may become priests.

1976: Guerrilla warfare in Rhodesia (what later became Zimbabwe) is endorsed by leaders of neighbouring black countries at a meeting in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.

1981: The Swedish Government releases a Soviet submarine that ran aground 11 days earlier in restricted Swedish waters near a naval base. Sweden announces an investigation had concluded the submarine was probably carrying nuclear warheads.

1984: US Republican President Ronald Reagan wins re-election to a second term by a landslide over Democrat Walter F Mondale.

1991: The last of more than 700 Kuwaiti oil wells set on fire by Iraqi forces during the Persian Gulf war are doused, as firefighting teams complete in eight months a job oil officials estimated would take more than two years.

1993: Georgian troops seize Zugdidi, last stronghold of rebels loyal to ousted President Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

1994: Rescuers struggle to reach villages and families trapped under the rubble of collapsed houses amid the devastation caused by heavy flooding across southern Europe.

1996: About 1,000 people are killed when a cyclone hits Andhra Pradesh State in southern India. It is the deadliest cyclone in India since 1977, when more than 10,000 people were killed, also in Andhra Pradesh.

1997: Severe flooding kills 31 people in western Spain and eastern Portugal.

1998: Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s vice-president and minister of defence, admits Rwandan troops were aiding a rebellion in neighbouring Congo aimed at ousting that country’s leader, President Laurent Kabila.

1999: Australians, refusing to shake their colonial past, reject a referendum to make their nation the world’s 147th republic and drop Britain’s queen as their head of state.

2000: Surgeons in London begin to separate conjoined twin girls in a long and complex operation that ends up killing one baby to give her sister a chance for a longer life.

2001: Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder pledges up to 3,900 German troops for the US war on terrorism, pushing the nation toward its most far-reaching military participation since World War II.

2002: The UN children’s agency (UNICEF) says one woman dies every 20 minutes in Afghanistan because of complications during pregnancy or childbirth — a maternal mortality rate that ranks among the highest in the world.

2005: Grenade-tossing attackers in Somalia’s capital set upon the prime minister, a day after two boatloads of the increasingly bold pirates plying its seas tried to seize a cruise ship carrying Western tourists.

2006: A German utility confirms it caused a weekend outage that left millions of people in several countries without power, but denies that the blackout revealed a lack of investment in Europe’s power grids.

2007: Astronomers say a new planet has been discovered orbiting a sun-like star 41 light years away, making it the first known planetary quintet outside our solar system.

2008: Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck becomes Bhutan’s first king since its transformation to democracy.

2009: Prime Minister Gordon Brown warns Afghanistan’s Government to take action against corruption, saying he would not risk more British lives there unless it reforms.

2010: A Yemeni judge orders police to find a radical US-born cleric “dead or alive” after the al-Qaeda-linked preacher fails to appear at his trial for his role in the killing of foreigners.

2011: Greece’s embattled prime minister and main opposition leader agree to form an interim government to ensure the country’s new European debt deal, capping a week of political turmoil that saw Greece face a catastrophic default that threatened its euro membership and roiled international markets.

2012: Vladimir Putin fires his defence minister over a corruption scandal but questions remain about what really was behind the downfall over a man who has overseen the most radical defence reform in Russia in decades.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

John Philip Sousa, US composer (1854-1937); James Jones, US novelist (1921-1977); Mike Nichols, US theatrical director-producer (1931-2014); Sally Field, US actress (1946- ); Maria Shriver, US journalist and former first lady in California (1955- ); Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, US supermodel/actress (1972- )

— AP