Today is the 177th day of 2020. There are 189 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2009: Michael Jackson, the “King of Pop” who emerged from childhood superstardom to become the entertainment world’s most influential singer and dancer before his life and career deteriorated in a series of scandals, dies at 50. Actress Farrah Fawcett dies in Santa Monica, California, at age 62.

OTHER EVENTS

1658: Aurangzeb, Mogul emperor of Hindustan, imprisons his father, the shah, after winning battle of Samgarh.

1868: Congress passes an Omnibus Act allowing for the re-admission of Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina to the Union.

1872: Roman Catholic Jesuit order is expelled from Germany.

1876: A force of 200 US soldiers under General George Armstrong Custer is wiped out by the Sioux at Little Big Horn, Montana.

1879: Ismael Khedive of Egypt, who had tried to free Egypt from Western control, is deposed by the Sultan and succeeded by his son Tawfiq.

1910: US President William Howard Taft signs the White-Slave Traffic Act, more popularly known as the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for “immoral” purposes.

1924: Britain says it will not abandon Sudan, despite Egyptian demands for complete withdrawal.

1942: British Royal Air Force stages 1,000-bomber raid on Bremen, Germany, in World War II.

1947: The Diary of a Young Girl, the personal journal of Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl hiding with her family from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II, is first published.

1950: Korean War begins with North Korea’s invasion of the Republic of Korea.

1959: Soviet Union proposes denuclearised zone in the Balkans and Adriatic.

1966: Vatican and Yugoslavia resume diplomatic relations in a major move aimed at improving Roman Catholic relations with communist world.

1972: Burundi Government reportedly continues to execute Hutu tribe members, and about 25,000 Hutu refugees are reported fleeing to other countries.

1973: Former White House Counsel John W Dean begins testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, implicating top Administration officials, including President Richard Nixon as well as himself, in the Watergate scandal and cover-up.

1975: Mozambique gains independence from Portugal.

1981: The US Supreme Court rules that male-only draft registration is constitutional.

1987: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev calls for sweeping changes in economy of USSR before year’s end.

1990: Anti-Government riots break out in Lusaka, Zambia.

1991: Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Croatia declare their independence from the federation, and violence breaks out.

1993: Tansu Ciller, Turkey’s first female premier, forms a coalition Government and promises to crack down on the nine-year-old Kurdish insurgency. Kim Campbell is sworn in as Canada’s 19th prime minister, the first woman to hold the post.

1997: In the most serious collision involving manned spacecraft, an unmanned cargo vessel smashes into Russian Mir space station during docking, rupturing a laboratory module and knocking out half the station’s power.

1998: South Korean commandos cut open the hatch of a North Korean submarine they captured and find the crew of nine shot to death in an apparent suicide pact. Suspicion focuses on spying activities. The US Supreme Court rejects a line-item veto law as unconstitutional, and rules that HIV-infected people were protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

1999: In his first state of the nation address, South African President Thabo Mbeki promises to tackle rampaging crime. The nation’s murder rate is the third highest in the world and more than 49,000 cases of rape were reported in 1998.

2000: The US Navy resumes training on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, where a fatal accident that killed a civilian guard at the range led to a year long occupation of the area by protesters.

2001: The ruling Socialist party in Albania claims victory despite elections being marred by shooting, burned ballots and disputes that force 15 polling stations to close.

2002: WorldCom Inc, the second-largest US telecommunications company, discloses it inflated its cash flow by US$3.8 billion. The questionable accounting methods eventually led to bankruptcy and lawmakers call for an overhaul of Securities and Exchange Commission accounting rules.

2003: US President George W Bush hosts European Union leaders at the White House for the annual US-EU summit. In a joint statement, both sides say they will agree to use “all means available” to block the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

2008: Queen Elizabeth II strips Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe of knighthood.

2012: The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad suffers an embarrassing string of high-ranking defections, with dozens of soldiers including senior officers reported to have fled to Turkey.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Russia’s Czar Nicholas I (1796-1855); Antonio Gaudi, Spanish architect (1852-1926); Lord Louis Mountbatten, English statesman (1900-1979); George Orwell, British writer (1903-1950); Sidney Lumet, US director (1924-2011); Carly Simon, US singer (1945- ); Jimmie Walker, US actor/comedian (1947- ); George Michael, pop singer (1963-2016); Ricky Gervais, British actor/writer/director (1961- )

— AP