Today is the 11th day of 2021. There are 354 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1964: US Surgeon General Luther Terry issues the first Government report saying smoking may be hazardous to one’s health. 

OTHER EVENTS

49 BC: Roman emperor Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon River and moves his troops into an offensive position in the war against Pompeii.

1569: First lottery in England is drawn in St Paul’s Cathedral under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I.

1814: Joachim Murat, king of Naples, deserts Napoleon Bonaparte and joins Allies.

1866: Ship London is wrecked en route to Australia. Some 231 people die.

1919: Romania annexes Transylvania.

1923: France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr valley after the German Government fails to keep up its World War I reparation payments.

1935: Aviator Amelia Earhart begins a trip from Honolulu to Oakland, California, becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.

1939: Abu Dhabi ruler Sheik Shakhbout signs emirate’s first oil agreement with a British-led consortium.

1942: Japan declares war against the Netherlands, the same day that Japanese forces invade the Dutch East Indies.

1943: Britain and United States relinquish extraterritorial rights in China.

1945: Truce is declared in Greek civil war.

1962: Avalanche buries village in the Peruvian Andes and 3,000 people are reported killed.

1970: In Nigeria, 32-month-old secessionist Biafran regime collapses under onslaughts from Nigerian military.

1972: New state of Bangladesh is recognised by East Germany.

1973: Owners of American League baseball teams vote to adopt the designated-hitter rule on a trial basis.

1976: President Rodriguez Lara of Ecuador is ousted in a coup.

1977: France sets off an international uproar by releasing Abu Daoud, a Palestinian suspected of involvement in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

1986: L Douglas Wilder becomes lieutenant governor of Virginia, making him the first African American sworn in as a southern state official since the American Civil War.

1990: About 250,000 people demonstrate in favour of independence in Lithuanian capital as Mikhail Gorbachev arrives there to persuade the local Communist Party to retract its decision to break with national party.

1991: Hundreds of uniformed Lithuanian nationalists keep all-night vigil in republic’s Parliament, saying they are defending it from possible attack by the Soviet army.

1993: The UN Security Council meets to warn Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that he is violating Gulf War ceasefire terms by his unauthorised seizure of weapons in Kuwaiti territory.

1995: An Intercontinental Aviation DC-9 with at least 52 people aboard crashes near Cartagena, Colombia, with only one survivor.

1996: A military court in Peru sentences American Lori Berenson to life in prison without parole for her involvement with a pro-Cuban guerrilla group.

1997: Burundian soldiers shoot and kill 126 Hutu refugees trying to break out of a holding camp in north-eastern Burundi.

1998: An armed gang attacks two villages outside Algiers, Algeria, slaughtering 120 people.

1999: Haiti’s President Rene Preval dissolves Parliament after a 22-month impasse with no working Government. He appoints a premier and a Cabinet by decree.

2001: General Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, enters the Santiago military hospital to undergo neurological and mental tests ordered by a judge seeking to try him on human rights charges. The US Army acknowledges that soldiers killed an “unknown number” of South Korean refugees early in the Korean War at No Gun Ri.

2002: The first 20 Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees from the US campaign in Afghanistan arrive at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for possible questioning and trial.

2003: The Indian Government and the Naga faction, one of the longest-running separatist insurgent groups in Asia, agree that a five-year ceasefire will become permanent and there will be no more fighting.

2004: Hardliners throw Iran’s legislative elections into crisis by disqualifying hundreds of liberal candidates, including more than 80 sitting lawmakers who are allied with the reformist President Mohammad Khatami.

2005: An anti-corruption judge places Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo’s sister under house arrest for masterminding the mass falsification of petition signatures to register his political party.

2006: Peru’s President Alejandro Toledo issues a sharp rebuke to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for openly supporting a nationalist former military officer running in Lima’s upcoming presidential elections.

2007: Bangladesh’s President Iajuddin Ahmed declares a state of emergency, steps down as interim leader of Bangladesh’s caretaker government, and postpones the January 22 elections following violent protests by a key political alliance that said it would boycott the vote.

2008: Eleven US soldiers are convicted and five officers disciplined in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Former Olympic track gold medalist Marion Jones is sentenced in White Plains, New York, to six months in prison for lying to investigators about using performance-enhancing drugs and her role in a cheque fraud scam. Sir Edmund Hillary, who along with Tenzing Norgay conquered Mount Everest in 1953, dies in Auckland, New Zealand, at age 88.

2009: Lawmakers, Muslim groups and the Pakistani public criticise Prince Harry after a British newspaper publishes video footage of him using offensive and racist language.

2010: Yemen’s most influential Islamic cleric, considered an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist by the US, warns that the US-backed fight against the terror group could lead to “foreign occupation” of the country.

2011: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange vows to step up his site’s release of secret documents while he fights extradition to Sweden, as his lawyers argue that sending him to Stockholm could land him in Guantanamo Bay or even on US death row.

2012: Motorcycle riders flash by and attach a magnetic bomb on to a car carrying a nuclear scientist working at Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility, instantly killing him and fatally wounding his driver in what Iran calls the latest strike in an escalating covert war.

2013: US President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai met at the White House, where they agreed to speed up slightly the schedule for moving Afghanistan’s security forces into the lead across the country, with US troops shifting fully to a support role.

2017: In a combative and freewheeling news conference at Trump Tower in New York, US President-elect Donald Trump said for the first time that he accepted that Russia was behind the election year hacking of Democrats that roiled the White House race; looking ahead, he urged Congress to move quickly to replace President Barack Obama’s signature health care law and insisted anew that Mexico would pay the cost of a border wall. 

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Francesco Parmigianino, Italian artist (1504-1540); Rod Taylor, Australian actor (1930-2015); Jean Chretien, former Canadian prime minister (1934- ); Clarence Clemons, US saxophonist w/rock group Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (1942-2011); Kim Coles, US actress (1962- ); Mary J Blige, US singer (1971- ) 

— AP