Today is the sixth day of 2021. There are 359 days left in the year,

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1942: The Pan American Airways Pacific Clipper arrives in New York after making the first round-the-world trip by a commercial aeroplane.

OTHER EVENTS

1492: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ride victoriously into Granada after their armies defeat Boabdil, the last Muslim ruler of Spain, completing the Christian reconquest of Spain.

1540: England’s King Henry VIII weds fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. The marriage ends six months later when she agrees to an annulment.

1810: Turkey agrees to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and Kuban with the enactment of the Treaty of Constantinople.

1818: Dominions of Holkar in India are annexed with Rajput states and come under British protection.

1838: Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates his telegraph, in Morristown, New Jersey.

1839: British forces capture Aden, Yemen.

1912: New Mexico becomes 47th US state.

1925: Top South Korean Opposition Leader Kim Dae-jung, a three-time presidential candidate, is born.

1941: US President Franklin D Roosevelt defines American goal of “Four Freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

1950: Britain recognises the Communist Government of China.

1963: Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi launches his “white revolution”, including redistributing land to peasants and giving women the vote.

1972: Washington indicates that a US naval task force dispatched during recent war between India and Pakistan marks start of regular American naval operations in Indian Ocean.

1989: Soviet Union calls downing of two Libyan aircraft by the United States “absolutely unfounded”.

1990: Polish Communist leaders vote to disband their party and form a new leftist party under a different name.

1992: Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia and his supporters shoot their way out of their stronghold and speed away.

1994: The Mexican Government flies tons of food to San Cristobal De Las Casas in Chiapas state, where Indian rebels are staging an uprising. Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the leg by an assailant in Detroit. Four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan’s skating rival, Tonya Harding, are sentenced to prison.

1995: Iran’s air force commander and 11 other officers are killed in a plane crash in central Iran.

1996: Rebels raiding a village in northern India shoot and kill 15 Hindu men after pulling them from their beds and separating them from Muslims.

1997: After a week of torrential rain in south-eastern Brazil, at least 67 people are killed and more than 32,000 are left homeless.

1998: Fifty-one people die in a train crash in Karna, India.

1999: Rebels fight their way into the capital of Sierra Leone, past a Nigerian-led intervention force, and burn government buildings.

2000: Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the Holy Land.

2001: The Palestinians oppose drafting a “declaration of principles” that would be based on US President Bill Clinton’s peace proposals, saying they “will not accept any kind of pressure” that would short-circuit their legitimate rights.

2002: US Special Forces and allied Afghan fighters return empty-handed from a four-day manhunt aimed at extracting Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar from his alleged mountain hideout in southern Afghanistan.

2003: The Tamil Tigers rebel group and the Sri Lankan Government hold a round of peace talks, making modest progress toward reconciliation after a 19-year-old civil war, but reaching no significant breakthroughs.

2004: Ugandan church leaders tell American supporters of gay bishop Gene Robinson they are not welcome at the consecration of the new leader of Uganda’s Anglicans, Bishop Henry Orombi.

2005: A baby boy is declared China’s 1.3-billionth citizen in a blaze of publicity to promote the government’s controversial “one child” birth limits.

2006: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatens to seize control of coffee-producing companies, or even nationalise them, if they refuse to sell the product at Government-controlled prices.

2007: Bahraini authorities revoke the citizenship of athlete Mushir Salem Jawher for competing in the Tiberias Marathon in Israel, saying Jawher broke the laws of Bahrain which does not recognise the Jewish state.

2008: Mikhail Saakashvili is elected to a second term as Georgia’s president. Thousands of Opposition protesters denounce the election as fraudulent.

2009: The Indian Navy agrees to buy eight reconnaissance and anti-submarine planes from Boeing Co in a US$2.1-billion deal that signals the developing nation’s drive to upgrade its military hardware, Boeing announces.

2010: A clash off Antarctica between a Japanese whaler and a boat from a protest group partly bankrolled by former American game show host Bob Barker leaves the anti-whaling vessel badly damaged and each side accusing the other of life-threatening behaviour.

2011: The internationally recognised winner of Ivory Coast’s presidential election asks for special forces to launch a commando operation to remove the country’s defiant sitting president who has refused to cede power five weeks after losing the vote.

2012: The political tensions between the US and Iran over transit in and around the Persian Gulf give way to photos of rescued Iranian fishermen happily wearing American Navy ball caps.

2013: A defiant Syrian President Bashar Assad rallies a chanting and cheering crowd to fight the uprising against his authoritarian rule, dismissing any chance of dialogue with rebels he blames for nearly two years of violence that has left 60,000 dead.

2014: Iraq’s prime minister urges Fallujah residents to expel al-Qaeda militants to avoid an all-out battle in the besieged city.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Joan of Arc, French leader and saint (1412-1431); Max Bruch, German composer (1838-1920); Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-American philosopher (1883-1931); Carl Sandburg, US poet (1878-1967); Kim Dae-jung, South Korean president (1925-2009); E L Doctorow, US author (1931-2015 ); Rowan Atkinson, English actor/comedian (1955- )

— AP