Today is the eighth day of 2020. There are 358 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1998: Ramzi Yousef, an Arab of uncertain nationality, is sentenced to life in prison plus 240 years for masterminding the World Trade Center bombing in New York that killed six people in 1993.

OTHER EVENTS

1499: France’s King Louis XII marries Anne, Duchess of Brittany.

1654: Ukraine joins Russia.

1679: French explorer La Salle reaches Niagara Falls.

1806: Britain occupies Cape of Good Hope.

1815: The Battle of New Orleans takes place with Andrew Jackson defeating the British army in the closing engagement of the War of 1812.

1912: The African National Congress is founded in Bloemfontein.

1915: Heavy fighting breaks out in areas of the Assee Canal in Belgium and Soissons, France, in World War I.

1918: US President Woodrow Wilson outlines his 14 points for peace after World War I.

1923: France begins military occupation of Ruhr valley in Germany.

1926: Ibn Saud becomes king of Hejaz on King Hussein’s expulsion and changes name of kingdom to Saudi Arabia.

1964: US President Lyndon Johnson declares an “unconditional war on poverty in America”.

1973: Secret peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam resume near Paris.

1974: Khmer Rouge in Cambodia intensify pressure on Phnom Penh with strikes north and south of the capital.

1982: Settling an antitrust lawsuit from the US Justice Department, the American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) monopoly divests itself of the 22 regional Bell System companies.

1987: The Dow Jones industrial average closes above 2,000 for the first time, ending the day at 2,002.25.

1989: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev says Kremlin is besieged by financial problems that are sapping his reforms.

1990: East German official discloses that 60,000 members of the secret police are still on government payroll despite the previous month’s pledge that the organisation would be dismantled.

1992: US President George H W Bush collapses to the floor at a State dinner in Tokyo. The White House says he is suffering from stomach flu.

1996: A cargo plane crashes into a crowded market in Kinshasa, Zaire (Congo), killing 255 people by the official count. The unofficial death toll reaches 1,000.

2003: A US Court of Appeals rules that US citizens detained in combat abroad could be held indefinitely, without access to a lawyer, with only “limited judicial inquiry” into their detention.

2004: Britain bans airlines from Albania, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Liberia, Tajikistan, Congo, and Cameroon from flying in British airspace, citing inadequate safety and security regulations.

2005: More than 100 police and security agents backed by five armoured personnel carriers surround a house in the restive southern Russian region of Ingushetia and kill five alleged militants in a shoot-out.

2006: A US Army Black Hawk helicopter crashes and kills all 12 Americans believed to be aboard, while five Marines die in weekend attacks in Iraq.

2007: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announces plans to nationalise the country’s electrical and telecommunications companies, one of his boldest moves in trying to transform Venezuela into a socialist state.

2008: Sudanese troops shoot a UN convoy in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region, destroying a fuel tanker and wounding a driver in the first attack against the peacekeepers since their mission began earlier in January.

2011: Spain’s leading broadcaster says it will no longer show the country’s centuries-old tradition of bullfighting in order to protect children from viewing violence.

2012: Iran begins uranium enrichment at a new underground site built to withstand possible airstrikes, a leading hard-line newspaper reports, in another show of defiance against Western pressure to rein in Tehran’s nuclear programme.

2013: US Barack Obama Administration officials say publicly for the first time that the US might leave no American troops in Afghanistan after the end of combat in December 2014, an option that defies the view of Pentagon officials.

2014: President Nicolas Maduro hastily gathers state governors and mayors to talk about the country’s violent crime amid outrage over the killing of a popular soap opera actress and former Miss Venezuela.

2015: Sri Lanka’s long-time President Mahina Rajapaksa acknowledges that he has been defeated by a one-time political ally, signalling the fall of a family dynasty and the rise of former Cabinet Minister Maithripala Sirisena.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Jose Ferrer, Puerto Rican-born actor-director (1912-1992); Elvis Presley, US singer (1935-1977); Shirley Bassey, Welsh-born singer (1937- ); Yvette Mimieux, American actress (1942- ); David Bowie, English singer-actor (1947-2016); Michelle Forbes, US actress (1965- ); Gaby Hoffman, US actress (1982- )

— AP