Today is the 134th day of 2021. There are 231 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2000: Tens of thousands attend the “Million Mom March” in Washington to demand stricter gun control and to memorialise those lost to gun violence.

OTHER EVENTS

1610: Francois Ravaillac, a fanatical Roman Catholic, assassinates France’s King Henry IV, who gave a measure of religious freedom to Protestants.

1796: First smallpox inoculation in England administered by Edward Jenner.

1801: The pasha of Tripoli declares war on the United States for its refusal to pay for safe passage of its ships in the Mediterranean. The Tripolitan pirates are defeated four years later.

1948: British mandate in Palestine ends, and an independent state of Israel is formed; Arab Legion of Transjordan invades Palestine and enters Jerusalem.

1955: Warsaw Pact formed by Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union.

1964: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev opens Aswan Dam in Egypt.

1972: Okinawa reverts to Japan after 27 years under US jurisdiction.

1987: Troops storm Fiji Parliament, declaring military government after kidnapping prime minister and his cabinet in South Pacific’s first coup.

1991: Winnie Mandela sentenced to six years in prison following conviction on kidnapping charges in South Africa, but is freed on the equivalent of US$72 bail.

1992: Intense fighting in Sarajevo traps 350 United Nations personnel in the Bosnian city.

1994: In a challenge to the United States, North Korea says that it has begun removing nuclear fuel from its largest reactor without international inspectors present.

1996: A Nigerian freighter with 3,500 Liberian war refugees is allowed to dock in Ghana after being turned away from African ports for 10 days.

1997: Turkish soldiers, tanks and jets invade northern Iraq to root out Kurdish guerrillas from mountain hideouts.

1999: Yugoslavs say 87 civilians die when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombs a village in Kosovo. NATO says the village was a military base, and that the dead were forced to be human shields by Serb soldiers.

2004: A senior Pentagon official says that Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the senior US commander in Iraq, has moved to limit the military’s allowable interrogation tactics, eliminating most coercive techniques from even being considered. In the past, requests for such methods were allowed with specific permission.

2005: Turkish soldiers kill nine Kurdish rebels in a military operation in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish south-east, following a European court judgement that the rebels’ imprisoned leader did not receive a fair trial.

2006: Rene Preval, the only elected president in Haiti’s history to finish his term, is sworn in to again lead the impoverished nation in its latest attempt at democracy, after decades of armed uprisings and lawlessness.

2007: A Chinese rocket blasts a Nigerian communications satellite into orbit, marking an expansion of China’s commercial launching services for foreign space hardware.

2009: Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is charged with breaking the terms of her house arrest just two weeks before she was to go free, a move seen as an attempt by Myanmar’s military junta to silence its chief opponent ahead of 2010 elections.

2010: US President Barack Obama assails oil drillers and his own Administration as he orders extra scrutiny of drilling permits to head off any repeat of the sickening oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Engineers work desperately to stop the leak that is belching out at least 210,000 gallons of crude a day.

2011: A pop star known for his bad boy antics on stage, Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly, becomes earthquake-devastated Haiti’s new president and urges Haitians to set aside their divisions and raise the country from rubble.

2012: Marathon efforts to break Greece’s post-electoral paralysis lurch into a ninth day amid the country’s worst crisis in decades, with fractious party leaders summoned to a yet another emergency meeting.

2013: In an op-ed appearing in The New York Times, Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie reveals she’d undergone a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that made it extremely likely she would get breast cancer.

2017: Emmanuel Macron sweeps into office as France’s new president, pledging to fortify the European Union, redesign French politics and glue together his divided nation.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Gabriel D Fahrenheit, German physicist (1686-1736); Otto Klemperer, German conductor (1885-1973); Pakistani ruler Ayub Khan (1907-1974); George Lucas, US film director and producer (1944- ); Robert Zemeckis, US film director (1951- ); David Byrne, Scottish-born pop singer (1952- ); Shanice, singer (1973- ); Cate Blanchett, Australian actress (1969- )

— AP