Today is the 73rd day of 2020. There are 293 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2013: Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina is elected pope, becoming the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium. He chooses the name Francis.

OTHER EVENTS

1325: Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, is founded.

1567: Margaret of Parma, Regent of the Netherlands, uses German mercenaries to annihilate 2,000 Calvinists.

1639: Harvard University is named for clergyman John Harvard.

1707: Holy Roman Empire agrees to Convention of Milan whereby French troops are to leave northern Italy.

1781: The planet Uranus is discovered by Sir William Herschel just past the planet Saturn. It was the first of three planets to be sighted during the next two hundred years.

1868: The impeachment trial of US President Andrew Johnson begins in the US Senate.

1881: Russia’s Czar Alexander II is assassinated by radical terrorists who demand a constitutional government in Russia. Ironically, the czar had just signed a Bill to establish exactly what they wanted. When he died, so did the agreement.

1884: Using Greenwich, England as the commencement point from which all time will be measured, an international time standard is adopted throughout the United States.

1900: British forces under Frederick Roberts capture Bloemfontein, South Africa.

1913: New Australian federal capital officially named Canberra.

1925: A law goes into effect in Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of evolution.

1938: Austria is annexed by Germany a day after Nazi troops march in.

1971: Quebec separatist Paul Rose is given life sentence in Montreal, Canada, for his part in kidnap and murder of Quebec Labour Minister Pierre LaPorte.

1974: The Arab nations agree to end their five-month oil embargo on sales to the US Their sanction crippled both the American industry and economy.

1989: Christian army units and Syrian-backed Muslim militiamen shatter ceasefire in clash across Beirut’s dividing Green Line.

1991: Kuwait’s emir, Sheik Jeber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, returns from exile after his country is liberated from Iraqi occupation.

1992: A 6.2-magnitude earthquake rocks Turkey, claiming at least 570 lives.

1996: A gunman in Dunblane, Scotland, shoots to death 16 children and a teacher.

1997: A military cargo plane crashes in the mountains in north-eastern Iran, killing all 88 people on board.

1998: South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, himself once imprisoned for his political beliefs, grants amnesty to some five million South Koreans, including six elderly political prisoners.

2007: Somalia’s President Abdullahi Yusuf comes under mortar attack in his palace just hours after moving in upon his return from southern stronghold Baidoa. He escapes unharmed in the assault, which kills seven people including a 12-year-old boy.

2008: Serbia’s president dissolves parliament and calls an early election that should determine whether the country aligns itself with the European Union and other Western groups or returns to its isolationist past.

2010: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s political coalition takes an early vote lead in the election’s all-important battleground of Baghdad, pulling away from its two closest rivals in the latest indication that Iraqis want a moderate government.

2011: The estimated death toll from Japan’s natural disasters climbs past 10,000 as authorities race to combat the threat of multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns and hundreds of thousands of people struggle to find food and water.

2012: Former News International executive Rebekah Brooks and her racehorse trainer husband Charlie are arrested in dawn raids that also netted four other suspects in the spreading phone hacking scandal.

2014: Russia conducts new military manoeuvres near its border with Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin says the world should not blame his country for what he called Ukraine’s “internal crisis”.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (1741-1790); Hugo Wolf, Austrian composer (1860-1903); George Seferis, Greek poet and diplomat, Nobel literature laureate (1900-1971); Kofi Awoonor, Ghanaian poet (1935-2013); Neil Sedaka, US singer (1939- ); William H Macy, US actor (1950- ); Dana Delany, US actress (1956- ); Adam Clayton, bassist with rock group U2 (1960- )

— AP