Today is the 307th day of 2020. There are 59 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2003: The US Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire installs as its bishop Reverend V Gene Robinson, consecrating the first openly homosexual Anglican bishop and drawing censure from numerous provinces within the worldwide Anglican Communion.

OTHER EVENTS

1783: General George Washington issues his “Farewell Address to the Army” near Princeton, New Jersey.

1841: The Second Afghan War starts when Afghans massacre British army officers.

1917: In the Balfour Declaration, the British government declares that it favours the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

1930: Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia.

1947: Howard Hughes pilots his huge wooden aeroplane, known as the Spruce Goose, on its only flight, which lasts about a minute over Long Beach Harbor in California.

1951: Bolivia receives a US$1-million US Export-Import Bank loan to expand production of tungsten to be sold to the US.

1962: US President John F Kennedy announces an end to the Cuban missile crisis, saying the Soviet Union is dismantling bases in Cuba.

1963: South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated by his own troops during a coup.

1964: King Saud of Saudi Arabia is deposed, and Faisal is proclaimed king.

1967: White mercenaries and black troops invade Congo from Portuguese Angola.

1972: Former Georgia Gov Jimmy Carter defeats Republican incumbent Gerald R Ford, becoming the first US president from the Deep South since the Civil War.

1983: US President Ronald Reagan signs a bill establishing a federal holiday on the third Monday of January in honour of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

1988: Government imposes nationwide night curfew in Sri Lanka after attacks by radical Sinhalese leave at least 16 people dead. The group opposes an accord that would grant a measure of autonomy to Tamils if the guerrillas lay down their arms.

1990: Militiamen in the Soviet republic of Moldavia shoot and kill six people and wound 30 during an ethnic clash.

1991: Yugoslav army renews attacks on Croatia.

1992: Basketball star Magic Johnson retires for a second time from the Los Angeles Lakers, just five weeks after the guard, who has HIV, announced he would return to the NBA.

1993: Sarajevo shivers in frigid temperatures as Bosnian Serbs block United Nations engineering crews from repairing vital electrical lines.

1994: A river of fire ignited by an oil tank explosion surges through a village in southern Egypt, killing more than 410 people.

1996: A United States Air Force F-16 fighter plane fires a missile at an Iraqi radar site while in the “no-fly” zone over southern Iraq.

1998: Chaos and looting erupts in Central America after Hurricane Mitch, which killed more than 7,000.

1999: Prominent Zulu prince Cyril Zulu, the mayor-designate of Durban, South Africa, is assassinated by an unknown gunman.

2000: One American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts move into Alpha, an international space station, for a four-month stay.

2001: Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Protestant government faces imminent suspension or collapse after two Protestant lawmakers refuse to support their leader, David Trimble’s re-election bid as government leader.

2007: Morocco recalls its ambassador from Spain after King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia announce plans to visit two Spanish enclaves in North Africa. Morocco’s claim to them is a consistent sore spot in bilateral relations.

2008: Hundreds of people march through Belarus’ capital to remember the victims of Stalinist purges and call for an end to repression in a country that still has many of the trappings of the former Soviet Union.

2009: US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton moderates her praise for Israel’s offer to restrain building settlements in Palestinian areas in the face of Arab criticism of the administration’s recalibrated Mideast peace tack.

2010: Britain and France strike a historic defence deal aimed at preserving military muscle in an age of austerity, pledging to deploy troops under a single command, share aircraft carriers and collaborate on once fiercely guarded nuclear programmes.

2011: Greece’s prime minister goes to the French resort of Cannes to explain to his furious European colleagues why he is holding a surprise referendum on a bailout deal that took them all months to work out.

2012: A video that appears to show a unit of Syrian rebels kicking terrified, captured soldiers and then executing them with machine guns raises concerns about rebel brutality at a time when the United States is pushing to forge an opposition movement it can work with.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Marie Antoinette, wife of France’s King Louis XVI (1755-1793); Luchino Visconti, Italian film director (1906-1976); Odysseus Elytis, pseudonym. of Odysseus Alepoudelis, Greek poet and Nobel laureate (1911-1996); Burt Lancaster, US actor (1913-1994); David Schwimmer, US actor (1966- ); K D Lang, Canadian singer (1961- )

— AP