Today is the 353rd day of 2020. There are 13 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1969: Britain’s House of Lords joins the House of Commons in making permanent a 1965 ban on the death penalty for murder.

OTHER EVENTS

1863: In a speech to the Prussian Parliament, Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck declares, “Politics is not an exact science”.

1865: The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, abolishing slavery, is declared in effect by Secretary of State William H Seward.

1892: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker publicly premieres in St Petersburg, Russia; although now considered a classic, it received a generally negative reception from critics.

1912: Fossil collector Charles Dawson reports to the Geological Society of London his discovery of supposed early human remains at a gravel pit in Piltdown. (More than four decades later, Piltdown Man is exposed as a hoax.)

1916: During World War I, the 10-month Battle of Verdun ends with French troops succeeding in repulsing a major German offensive.

1917: Congress passes the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution prohibiting “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” and sent it to the states for ratification.

1944: The US Supreme Court upholds the Government’s wartime evacuation of people of Japanese descent from the West Coast, ruling that “concededly loyal” Americans of Japanese ancestry could not continue to be detained.

1956: Japan is admitted to the United Nations. The panel game show To Tell the Truth debuts on CBS-TV.

1972: The US begins heavy bombing of North Vietnamese targets during the Vietnam War. (The bombardment ends 11 days later.)

1992: Kim Young-sam is elected South Korea’s first civilian president in three decades.

2001: A US district judge vacates the death sentence of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the former journalist and Black Panther convicted in the 1981 shooting of a Philadelphia police officer. Abu Jamal’s case is a cause-célebre for leftists and death penalty opponents worldwide.

2006: Chief prosecutor in ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s trial presents memos from Hussein’s office approving chemical attacks against Kurdish villages, the most serious evidence against him in his genocide trial.

2007: The White House says President George W Bush has approved “a significant reduction” in the US nuclear weapons stockpile, cutting it to less than one-quarter its size at the end of the Cold War. The UN Security Council votes unanimously to extend the US-led multinational force in Iraq for one year. Jacob Zuma is elected leader of the African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling party, defeating incumbent Thabo Mbeki.

2009: President Barack Obama says the United States, China and several other countries reached an “unprecedented breakthrough” to curb greenhouse gas emissions after a frenzied day of diplomacy at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen.

2011: The last US soldiers roll out of Iraq across the border into neighbouring Kuwait, marking the end of a bitterly divisive war.

2012: Classes resume in Newtown, Connecticut, except at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the scene of a massacre four days earlier. Two bank robbers pull off a daring escape from downtown Chicago’s high-rise jail by scaling down 17 storeys using a makeshift rope. (Kenneth Conley and Jose Banks are later recaptured.)

2014: Many Cubans hope restoration of diplomatic ties with the US will mean access to things taken for granted elsewhere and lift a struggling socialist economy where staples like meat, cooking oil and toilet paper are often hard to come by.

2016: Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor dies at her Los Angeles home at age 99.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Elizabeth Petrovina, Empress of Russia (1709-1762); Carl Maria von Weber, German composer (1786-1826); Robert Moses, US public works planner (1888-1981); Ossie Davis, US actor (1917-2005); Stephen Biko, South African anti-apartheid activist (1946-1977); Keith Richards, English rock musician (1943- ); Steven Spielberg, US film director (1946- ); Brad Pitt, US actor (1963- ); Katie Holmes, US actress (1978- ); Christina Aguilera, US pop singer (1980- )

— AP