Today is the 281st day of 2002. There are 85 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1993: African National Congress President Nelson Mandela and South African President F W de Klerk are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in dismantling apartheid and negotiating South Africa’s transition to a non-racial democracy.

OTHER EVENTS

1571: In a naval engagement, allied Christian forces — an Austrian, Genovese and Venetian fleet — defeat the Turks in the Battle of Lepano during an Ottoman campaign to acquire Cyprus.

1765: The Stamp Act Congress convenes in New York to draw up colonial grievances against England.

1769: Captain James Cook lands in New Zealand for the first time, at Poverty Bay.

1826: The first gravity-powered American railroad goes into operation, running from Quincy to Milton, Massachusetts, carrying granite rock down to the waterfront.

1879: Britain invades Afghanistan.

1935: League of Nations declares Italy aggressor in Ethiopia.

1949: German Democratic Republic is established in Soviet-occupied eastern Germany.

1950: UN General Assembly approves Allied advance north of 38th parallel in Korean conflict.

1954: Marian Anderson becomes the first black singer hired by the New York Metropolitan Opera House.

1958: President Iskander Nirza proclaims martial law in Pakistan.

1963: US President John F Kennedy signs nuclear test ban treaty between United States, Britain and Soviet Union.

1970: Egypt’s Vice-President Anwar Sadat officially succeeds the late General Gamal Abdel Nasser as president.

1975: The Soviet Union and East Germany sign a revised treaty of “friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance” eliminating all reference to the eventual unification of the two German states.

1981: Egypt’s Vice-President Hosni Mubarak is nominated as successor to slain President Anwar Sadat.

1982: The Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical Cats opens in New York, beginning its record run of 7,485 performances.

1992: Trade representatives from the United States, Canada and Mexico initial the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement in Texas.

1995: New York’s Central Park is transformed into a giant, open-air cathedral as Pope John Paul II celebrates Mass before a flock of 250,000.

1996: Two car bombs explode inside the British army’s heavily guarded headquarters in Northern Ireland, injuring 31 people.

2000: Vojislav Kostunica takes the oath of office as Yugoslavia’s first popularly elected president, closing the turbulent era of Slobodan Milosevic.

2001: The United States and Britain launch a military attack on Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, and his Taliban backers in Afghanistan.

2002: Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships attack targets in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, killing 16 Palestinians and injuring at least 80 others. Most of the victims are killed when an Israeli helicopter fires a missile into a crowded street.

2003: California votes in a special election to recall Democratic Governor Gray Davis from office and replace him with Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican action-film star.

2007: The UN’s highest court grants Honduras sovereignty over four Caribbean islands in its decades-old dispute with Nicaragua, and carves up rich fishing grounds and offshore exploration concessions for oil and gas.

2008: A former US Army contractor pleads guilty to stealing nearly US$40 million worth of jet and diesel fuel from a US Army base in Iraq and selling it on the black market.

2009: Pakistan’s powerful military rejects US attempts to link billions of dollars in foreign aid to increased monitoring of its anti-terror efforts, complicating American attempts to strike al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters on the Afghan border.

2010: The toxic red sludge that burst out of a Hungarian factory’s reservoir reaches the mighty Danube after wreaking havoc on smaller rivers and creeks, and downstream nations rush to test their waters.

2011: Revolutionary fighters assault Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte from all sides in what they hope will be a final, all-out offensive to crush resistance in the most important bastion of regime loyalists.

2012: President Hugo Chavez wins re-election and a new endorsement of his socialist project, surviving his closest race yet after a bitter campaign in which the Opposition accused him of unfairly using Venezuela’s oil wealth and his near total control of State institutions to his advantage.

2013: A string of attacks kill nine members of Egypt’s security and military forces and hit the country’s main satellite communications station in an apparent retaliation by Islamic militants a day after more than 50 supporters of the ousted president were killed in clashes with the police.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Sir Walter Raleigh, English explorer-poet-courtier (1552-1618); Niels Bohr, Danish nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize winner (1885-1962); Desmond Tutu, Anglican archbishop in South Africa, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize (1931- ); Yo-Yo Ma, cellist (1955- ); Toni Braxton, US singer (1968- ); John Mellencamp, US singer (1951- ); Simon Cowell, British producer/judge on TV’s American Idol (1959- ).

—AP