Today is the 206th day of 2020. There are 160 days left in the year. 

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1929: US President Herbert Hoover proclaims the Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy.

OTHER EVENTS

1567: Barely more than one year old, the son of Mary of Scotland is crowned James VI when his mother, defeated by rebel Scottish lords, abdicates the throne. He becomes King James I of England when his cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, dies.

1704: British capture Gibraltar during War of Spanish Succession.

1799: France’s Napoleon Bonaparte defeats Turks at Aboukir in Egypt.

1847: Brigham Young and the first Mormons arrive at Great Salt Lake in present-day Utah.

1911: Yale University professor Hiram Bingham discovers Inca city Machu Picchu in Peru.

1922: League of Nations Council approves mandates for Palestine and Egypt.

1923: Greece gives up Smyrna, eastern Thrace and two islands to Turkey under the Treaty of Lausanne, which settles the borders of modern-day Turkey.

1942: British bombers devastate German cities of Frankfurt and Mannheim in World War II.

1946: United States makes first underwater test of an atomic bomb off atoll of Bikini in Pacific Ocean.

1969: The US Apollo 11 astronauts, the first men to walk on moon, splash down safely in the Pacific Ocean.

1974: Konstantinos Karamanlis returns from exile and is sworn in as prime minister of Greece after the junta relinquishes control.

1976: US spacecraft Viking 1 lands on Mars and starts tests to determine whether life exists on the planet.

1981: Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization endorse separate cease fire agreements to end fighting along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

1992: The Mexican Government accuses the United States of excessive interference in antidrug efforts and declines aid earmarked to combat narcotics.

1994: Rwandan refugees trickle into Zaire — now Congo — after the border is opened, to escape filthy, crowded camps where death from cholera and dehydration abound.

1996: In Colombo, Sri Lanka, two bombs rip through separate cars of a commuter train, killing 63 people in an attack blamed on Tamil Tiger separatist rebels.

1997: After 290 years of union, the British Government offers Scots the power to legislate, to tax and to speak for themselves in the European Union.

2003: The joint US Congressional Committee on Intelligence releases a report of more than 800 pages on its 10-month-long inquiry into intelligence failures leading up to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

2006: Hundreds of Taliban fighters attack a western Afghan government building with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, killing three police officers and wounding seven in one of the militia’s boldest strikes in the long-quiet region.

2007: Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor return home after secretive talks lead to their release by Libya after eight and a half years in prison — much of it under sentence of death — for widely rejected charges of infecting children with HIV.

2008: Ford Motor Co posts the worst quarterly performance in its history, losing US$8.67 billion. Zvonko Busic, who had served 32 years in a US prison for hijacking a TWA jetliner and planting a bomb that killed a policeman, is paroled and returned home to Croatia.

2012: President John Mills of Ghana dies before he can complete his first term in office and Vice-President John Mahama is sworn in hours later, underscoring the country’s reputation as one of the most stable democracies in West Africa.

2013: It is announced by Kensington Palace that the newborn son of Prince William and Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, would be named George Alexander Louis. Virginia Johnson, half of the renowned Masters and Johnson team of sex researchers, die in St Louis at age 88.

2014: Israel tank shells hit a compound housing a UN school in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens seeking shelter from fierce clashes on the streets outside as it presses forward with its 17-day war with the territory’s Hamas rules.

2017: In a speech to a national Boy Scout gathering in West Virginia, President Donald Trump rails against his enemies and promotes his political agenda, bringing an angry reaction from some parents and former scouts from both parties. US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner answers questions from Senate investigators for four hours about contacts with Russians during and after Trump’s campaign for the White House; he says he “did not collude with Russia” and that all of his actions “were proper”.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Simon Bolivar, leader of South American independence (1783-1830); Alexandre Dumas, French writer (1802-1870); Ernst Bloch, Swiss-born composer (1880-1959); Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, Japanese writer (1886-1965); Amelia Earhart, US aviation pioneer (1898-1937); Cootie Williams, US jazz musician (1908-1985); Bella Abzug, US lawyer, politician and activist (1920-1998); Gus Van Sant, US director (1952- ); Jennifer Lopez, US actress/singer (1969- )

— AP