Today is the 309th day of 2020. There are 57 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2008: Barack Obama is elected the first black president of the United States.

OTHER EVENTS

1530: England’s Cardinal Wolsey is arrested for being a traitor.

1547: England’s Parliament repeals the Henrican Act as the first stage in Protestant Reformation.

1879: The cash register is patented by James and John Ritty of Dayton, Ohio.

1921: Japan’s Premier Takashi Hara is assassinated.

1922: British archaeologist Howard Carter discovers the entrance to King Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt.

1924: Nellie T Ross of Wyoming is elected as United States’ first woman governor; she serves the remaining term of William B Ross, her husband who died in office.

1939: The United States modifies its neutrality stance in World War II, allowing “cash and carry” purchases of arms by belligerents, a policy favouring Britain and France.

1944: Allies announce that Greece has been liberated from German Nazis in World War II.

1952: Dwight D Eisenhower is elected US president, defeating Democrat Adlai Stevenson.

1964: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is forcibly exiled from Iran. He settles in Iraq.

1976: Britain proposes Rhodesian independence under black majority rule by March 1, 1978.

1984: About 1,000 Sikhs, battered by Hindus outraged over assassination of India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, take refuge in Sis Ganj shrine.

1991: Former First Lady Imelda Marcos returns to the Philippines, ending more than five years of exile in the US. Her arrival follows the Government’s decision to endorse her return so that she could be tried on corruption and tax-evasion charges.

1993: Thousands of people who received transfusions demand AIDS tests, terrified they may have been given tainted blood from a company in Germany that was accused of improper testing.

1995: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated as he leaves a pro-peace rally in Tel Aviv.

1997: The United States announces it has bought 21 MiG-29 jet fighters from former Soviet republics to prevent the advanced planes from ending up in Iran.

1999: Aaron McKinney, who beat gay college student Matthew Shepard and left him to die on the Wyoming prairie, avoids the death penalty by agreeing to serve life in prison without parole and promising never to appeal his conviction.

2001: Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Damascus, Syria, condemn Osama bin Laden, the fugitive who is believed to have masterminded the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

2003: Wal-Mart Stores Inc is under investigation by a federal grand jury for its role in employing illegal immigrants. Earlier, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raid 61 Wal-Mart stores in 21 states, arresting around 250 illegally employed cleaning workers in the largest mass immigration raid in years.

2005: Pakistani President Gen Pervez Musharraf suspends a major purchase of US fighter planes, explaining that the money is needed for recovery from the recent earthquake.

2010: After a tense 95 minutes while the pilots dump fuel after an engine catches fire and blows out, a massive, double-decker Airbus 380 jetliner — the world’s largest — returns safely to Singapore, where it makes an emergency landing with 459 people aboard.

2013: In Tehran’s largest anti-US rally in years, tens of thousands of demonstrators join in chants of “death to America”, as hardliners direct a major show of resolve against President Hassan Rouhani’s outreach to Washington.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Edmund Kean, English actor (1787-1833); Will Rogers, US humorist (1879-1935); Walter Cronkite, US newsman (1916-2009); Sean “Puffy” Combs, US rapper/producer (1969- ); Doris Roberts, US actress (1930-2016)

— AP