Today is the 71st day of 2020. There are 295 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2008: The Belgian Government and banks agree to pay US$170 million (euro110 million) to Holocaust survivors, families of victims and the Jewish community for losses during World War II. About half of the 50,000 Jews in Belgium were exterminated in the Holocaust.

OTHER EVENTS

1302: Romeo and Juliet’s wedding day, according to Shakespeare.

1812: King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia gives Jewish citizens equal rights.

1888: The “Blizzard of 88” strikes the north-eastern United States, piling up snow up to 6 metres (20 feet) deep and resulting in some 400 deaths.

1917: British forces capture Baghdad during World War I.

1941: US President Franklin D Roosevelt signs into law the Lend-Lease Bill, providing war supplies to countries fighting the Axis.

1943: British Eighth Army repulses heavy German counter-attacks in Tunisia in World War II.

1965: A white minister from Boston, the Rev James J Reeb, dies after whites beat him during civil rights demonstrations in Selma, Alabama.

1985: Politburo leader Mikhail S Gorbachev is chosen to succeed the late Soviet President Konstantin U Chernenko.

1998: South Korea says it will compensate women who were enslaved in Japanese army brothels in World War II, then recover the money from Japan.

2002: Fifteen are killed and more than 50 others injured in a fire and stampede at a girls’ school in Saudi Arabia, sparking an outcry after religious police prevented male firefighters and paramedics from rescuing the girls because they were not wearing the black head-to-toe covering required by Saudi law.

2004: A series of bombs hidden in backpacks blow apart four commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, killing at least 199 people and wounding more than 1,400 in the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history.

2006: Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, being tried at The Hague for war crimes after orchestrating a decade of bloodshed that killed 250,000 people and broke up his country, is found dead after a heart attack in his prison cell.

2009: A 17-year-old wielding a Beretta 9m pistol bursts into a classroom in his former high school in Germany and guns down students in a rampage that leaves 15 dead before he takes his own life.

2012: A US Army sergeant opens fire on Afghan villagers as they sleep, killing 16 people — mostly women and children — in an attack that reignites fury at the US presence following a wave of deadly protests over Americans burning Qurans.

2015: The European Union studies new ways to beef up border patrols in the face of an unprecedented influx of migrants crossing the Mediterranean and travelling through the Balkans.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Torquato Tasso, Italian poet (1544-1595); Louis Florence d’Epinay, French author (1726-1783); Christian Ditlev, Count Reventlow, Danish statesman who abolished serfdom (1748-1827); Astor Piazzolla, Argentine musician (1921-1992); Douglas Adams, British writer (1952-2001); Rupert Murdoch, Australian media magnate (1931- ); Alex Kingston, British actress (1963- ); Terrence Howard, US actor (1969- )

— AP