Today is the 283rd day of 2020. There are 83 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1991: The US Food and Drug Administration conditionally approves the sale of DDI, the second drug used for routine AIDS treatment. It was approved for use by patients who failed to respond to AZT, the only other drug currently approved.

OTHER EVENTS

1000: Viking explorer Leif Ericson sights “Vinland,” possibly Newfoundland.

1701: The Collegiate School of Connecticut — later Yale University — is chartered in New Haven.

1760: Russians capture Berlin.

1776: A group of Spanish missionaries settles in present-day San Francisco.

1801: Turkey formally recovers Egypt by treaty with France.

1806: Prussia declares war on France.

1934: King Aleksander I of Yugoslavia and French foreign minister Jean Louis Barthou are assassinated in Marseilles, France, by an agent of Croat nationalists.

1958: Pope Pius XII dies, 19 years after he was elevated to the papacy. He was succeeded by Pope John XXIII.

1963: Mutesa II, ruler of Buganda becomes the first president of Uganda.

1967: Latin American guerrilla leader Che Guevara is executed in Bolivia while attempting to incite a revolution.

1970: Work begins on the Trans-Amazon highway.

1971: Army rebels in Argentina surrender after a 19-hour attempt to overthrow the government.

1974: A US official and six other hostages held by left-wing guerrillas for two weeks in the Dominican Republic are freed when the terrorists accept a government offer of safe-conduct to Panama.

1981: Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin arrives in Cairo for funeral of Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat.

1983: A powerful bomb, believed planted by North Korean agents, explodes in Rangoon, Burma, killing 18 members of South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan’s entourage.

1985: The hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise liner surrender after the ship arrives in Port Said, Egypt.

1987: Powerful car bomb explodes near mosque in Afghanistan capital of Kabul, killing 27 people and wounding 35.

1989: Newly created Hungarian Socialist Party adopts a manifesto vowing commitment to democracy.

1990: Forty-seven people are killed in India when a train car is set afire by terrorists protesting an injunction against an affirmative-action plan.

1992: The UN Security Council votes to ban all flights by military aircraft over Bosnia-Herzegovina and create a “no-fly zone”.

1993: Somali warlord General Mohammed Farah Aidid offers a ceasefire with US and UN forces in Somalia.

1994: Two Palestinians armed with automatic rifles and grenades attack Israelis and tourists on a Jerusalem street before being shot to death.

1995: An earthquake hits Jalisco and Colima states in western Mexico, killing 48 people and injuring more than 100.

1996: Soldiers loyal to Afghanistan’s deposed government halt the Taliban advance and break through its lines.

1997: A hurricane sweeps across Mexico’s Pacific coast, devastating Acapulco and killing 249 people.

1998: After 15 years of disgrace, Ariel Sharon returns to the centre of power as foreign minister of Israel in charge of peace talks with the Palestinians.

1999: German General Klaus Reinhardt takes over as the leader of the peacekeeping troops in Kosovo, promising to keep a close watch on former ethnic Albanian rebels feared by the province’s Serb population.

2000: A Slovenian ski instructor becomes the first person ever to ski nonstop down the slopes of Mount Everest in Kathmandu.

2001: Americans Eric A Cornell, Carl E Wieman Wolfgang Ketterle win the Nobel Prize in physics for creating a new state of matter: An ultra-cold gas that could aid in developing smaller and faster electronics.

2002: Sniper attacks kill three people in northern Virginia, bringing to 11 the total number of victims killed or wounded in a string of related shootings in the Washington, DC, area.

2005: Iran’s nuclear showdown with the West moves to the UN nuclear agency, whose 35-nation board considers a fresh warning to Tehran to suspend its atomic activities.

2006: The UN Security Council formally nominates South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon to succeed Kofi Annan as United Nations secretary-general.

2007: The impoverished Nama tribe wins back diamond-rich land confiscated by a government mining company more than 80 years ago, ending South Africa’s longest running court case.

2008: An explosives-laden vehicle blows up an anti-terrorist squad building and wounds at least four people in a heavily guarded police complex in Pakistan’s capital.

2010: Chile’s trapped miners cheer and embrace each other as a drill punches into their underground chamber, opening a way out with a spray of rock and dust from the collapsed mine where they have been stuck for an agonising 66 days.

2011: Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk appears to clinch a second term in office for his centrist, pro-European Civic Platform party in parliamentary elections, a historic first in the country’s post-communist era.

2012: Israel’s prime minister orders new parliamentary elections in early 2013, roughly eight months ahead of schedule, setting the stage for a lightening-quick campaign that will likely win him re-election.

2013: Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani says Iran has more enriched uranium than it needs for its research and would be willing to discuss the “surplus” with Western powers during nuclear talks.

2014: Six US military planes with more Marines arrive in the Ebola hot zone in Liberia, as West Africa’s leaders plead for the world’s help in dealing with “a tragedy unforeseen in modern times”.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Camille Saint-Saens, French composer (1835-1921); Tawfiq Hakim, Egyptian writer (1898-1987); Jacques Tati, French film director and actor (1908-1982); John Lennon, British pop singer (1940-1980), Sharon Osbourne, actress (1952- ), Sean Lennon, British singer (1975- )

— AP