Today is the 42nd day of 2020. There are 324 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2013: Pope Benedict XVI does what no pope has done in more than half a millennium, announcing his resignation and sending the already troubled Roman Catholic Church scrambling to replace the leader of its one billion followers.

OTHER EVENTS

1254: The British Parliament first convenes.

1531: King Henry VIII is recognised as supreme head of the Church in England.

1744: Naval battle of Toulon begins between Britain and combined Franco-Spanish fleet.

1798: French forces take Rome.

1812: Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signs a redistricting law that favours his party — giving rise to the term “gerrymandering”.

1888: King Lobengda of Matabele, Rhodesia, accepts British protection.

1889: Constitution is granted in Japan, with two-chamber Diet, but emperor retains extensive powers.

1922: Nine-power treaty is signed in Washington for securing China’s independence and maintaining “open door” policy.

1929: Italy signs the Lateran Treaty establishing an independent Vatican City.

1944: US carrier planes strike heavy blows against Japanese positions in Marshall Islands in Pacific during World War II.

1945: US President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin sign the Yalta Agreement during World War II.

1956: Referendum in Malta favours integration with Britain.

1967: Military rule is imposed in Beijing during civil strife in China.

1968: Communist troops execute 300 civilians in South Vietnam and bury them in a mass grave during fighting for city of Hue.

1971: Treaty banning nuclear weapons from ocean floor is signed by 63 nations in ceremonies at Washington, London and Moscow.

1975: Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female head of the British Conservative Party.

1979: Followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seize power in Iran, nine days after the religious leader returns to his home country following 15 years of exile.

1986: Jewish dissident Anatoly Scharansky walks to freedom in Berlin after almost nine years in Soviet captivity on espionage charges.

1989: Barbara Harris becomes the first consecrated female Episcopal bishop in United States.

1990: African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela is released after 27 years in South African prisons.

1993: A Somali gunman hijacks a Lufthansa Airbus over Austria with 104 people aboard and orders it flown to New York, where he surrenders peacefully and releases his hostages unharmed.

1994: A NATO-enforced ceasefire takes hold in Sarajevo.

1999: The US Justice Department closes the books on a US$1.6-billion reparations programme for ethnic Japanese interned in American camps during World War II.

2000: Britain strips Northern Ireland’s Protestant-Catholic Government of power in a bid to prevent its collapse over the Irish Republican Army’s refusal to disarm.

2001: About 7,500 counter-demonstrators turn out to protest against a neo-Nazi march in western Germany that draws 250 people. Four police officers suffer minor injuries, and 17 demonstrators are arrested.

2002: Jordan’s State Security Court sentences US-born Raed Hijazi to death by hanging for plotting attacks on US and Israeli targets in Jordan during celebrations in the new year 2000.

2006: Adventurer Steve Fossett completes the longest non-stop flight in aviation history with an emergency landing in England, flying 26,389 miles (42,469 kilometres) in about 76 hours but stopping early because of mechanical problems.

2007: Turkmenistan holds a tightly controlled presidential election, the first ever with more than one candidate, to replace long-time, iron-fisted leader Saparmurat Niyazov. Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov wins, but shows little promise for liberaliation in the isolated former Soviet republic.

2008: Rebel soldiers shoot and critically wound East Timor’s President Jose Ramos-Horta and open fire on Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, who escaped the attack unhurt, in a failed coup attempt in the recently independent nation.

2010: Iranian security forces unleash a crushing sweep against Opposition protesters as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad uses the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution to defy the West and boast his country is now a “nuclear state”.

2011: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigns and hands power to the military after protesters flood the streets of Cairo and other cities.

2012: Gunmen assassinate an army general in Damascus in the first killing of a high-ranking military officer in the Syrian capital since the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s regime began in March.

2015: The Republican-controlled US Congress approves a Bill to construct the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, setting up a confrontation with President Barack Obama who has threatened to veto the measure.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Thomas A Edison, US inventor (1847-1931); Sidney Sheldon, US author (1917-2007); Burt Reynolds, US actor (1936-2018); Tina Louise, US actress (1934- ); Sergio Mendes, Brazilian musician (1941- ); Sheryl Crow, US singer (1962- ); Jennifer Aniston, US actress (1969- ); Brandy, US singer/actress (1979- ).

— AP