Today is the 30th day of 2020. There are 336 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1948: Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated by a Hindu nationalist in New Delhi, India.

OTHER EVENTS

1641: Portuguese surrender Malacca in Malaya to the Dutch.

1648: Peace between Spain and the Netherlands is signed at Muenster.

1649: England’s King Charles I is beheaded.

1781: The US Articles of the Confederation, a forerunner of the Constitution, are adopted by Maryland, the last of the original 13 colonies to do so.

1788: Charles Edward Stuart, young pretender to British throne, dies in Rome.

1835: Demented painter Richard Lawrence tries to assassinate US President Andrew Jackson.

1889: Crown Prince Rudolf and his lover Baroness Mary Vetsera, 18, are found dead in possible suicide pact at the Mayerling hunting lodge outside Vienna.

1902: Britain signs treaty with Japan providing for independence of China and Korea.

1933: Adolf Hitler is named chancellor of Germany.

1943: Soviets destroy German army south-west of Stalingrad in World War II.

1957: United Nations calls on South Africa to reconsider its apartheid policy.

1962: UN General Assembly adopts Asian-African resolution calling on Portugal to halt repressive measures against Angola.

1964: South Vietnamese General Nguyen Khanh seizes power in coup in Saigon; the US launches Ranger 6, an unmanned spacecraft carrying television cameras, to crash-land on the moon.

1968: The Tet Offensive begins as Communist forces launch surprise attacks against South Vietnamese provincial capitals.

1970: Two students are killed and more than 200 wounded as demonstrators storm presidential palace in Philippine capital of Manila.

1972: Thirteen Roman Catholic civil rights marchers are shot to death by British soldiers in Northern Ireland on what becomes known as “Bloody Sunday”.

1979: White Rhodesians approve new constitution to eventually give blacks control of the nation, now known as Zimbabwe; the civilian government of Iran announces it has decided to allow Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was living in exile in France, to return.

1986: President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines pledges to relinquish power peacefully if he loses to Corazon Aquino in the February 7 election.

1990: Communist Party loses majority in Czech Parliament, which it dominated for four decades.

1991: Iraqi forces attack allied positions in Saudi Arabia near Kuwaiti border, holding abandoned coastal city of Khafji for a time. Eleven US marines are killed, seven by friendly fire.

1992: US military announces it will halt or cut back operations at 83 additional military sites in Europe.

1994: The United States grants a limited visa to Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the Northern Irish political party that supports the outlawed Irish Republican Army.

1995: A car bomb explodes in Algiers, killing at least 20 people and injuring about 60 in the worst bombing during a three-year insurgency by Islamic militants.

1999: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) authorises its secretary-general to launch military action against Yugoslavia if it does not negotiate an agreement for autonomy in Kosovo.

2000: In Berlin, Germany, hundreds of neo-Nazis demonstrate at the site of a planned memorial to Holocaust victims and march through the Brandenburg Gate where Nazi troops once held processions.

2002: The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland agrees to pay US$10 million to children sexually abused by clergy over the past few decades.

2003: Richard Reid, who in October 2002 pleaded guilty to attempting to bomb a trans-Atlantic flight, is sentenced by a court in Boston to life in prison.

2004: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announces that UN staffers can receive benefits for their gay or lesbian partners if their country recognises same-sex marriages or domestic partnerships.

2007: The United Nations’ first women-only peacekeeping contingent — made up of about 100 Indian policewomen — arrives in Liberia to join the UN’s 15,000-strong peacekeeping force in the West African country.

2008: The Australian Government says it will issue its first formal apology to its indigenous people on February 13, a milestone that could ease tensions with a minority whose mixed-blood children were once taken away on the premise that their race was doomed.

2009: Waterford Crystal workers mount a sit-down protest after bankruptcy officials shut down their world-famous factory in Waterford, Ireland.

2010: China suspends military exchanges with the United States, threatens unprecedented sanctions against American defence companies and warns that cooperation would suffer after Washington announced $6.4 billion in planned arms sales to Taiwan.

2011: Hundreds of South Africans fill an historic church in the township of Soweto to pray for former President Nelson Mandela after his release from a hospital where he was treated for an acute respiratory tract infection.

2012: Paramilitary police in northern Senegal open fire on men and women protesting President Abdoulaye Wade’s plan to run for a third term, killing two.

2013: Israel conducts a rare air strike on a military target inside Syria near the border with Lebanon amid fears President Bashar Assad’s regime could provide powerful weapons to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah.

2014: An appeals court in Florence upholds the guilty verdict against US student Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend for the 2007 murder of her British roommate, raising the spectre of a long legal battle over her extradition if the conviction is upheld.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Franklin D Roosevelt, US president (1882-1945); Gene Hackman, US actor (1930- ); Vanessa Redgrave, English actress (1937- ); Phil Collins, English pop singer (1951- ); Brett Butler, US actress/ comedian (1958- ); Christian Bale, English actor (1974- ); Jody Watley, US singer (1959- )

— AP