Today is the 137th day of 2021. There are 228 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1954: A unanimous US Supreme Court handed down its Brown v Board of Education of Topeka decision, which held that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal, and therefore unconstitutional.

OTHER EVENTS

1792: Twenty-four merchants meet under a tree and form the New York Stock Exchange, at 70 Wall Street.

1814: Norway’s constitution is signed, providing for a limited monarchy.

1875: The first Kentucky Derby is run. The winner, Aristides, is ridden by Oliver Lewis.

1934: Military seizes power in Bulgaria from democratic government destabilised by Great Depression.

1940: Nazi Germany occupies Brussels, Belgium, in World War II.

1946: President Harry S Truman seizes control of the nation’s railroads, delaying — but not preventing — a threatened strike by engineers and trainmen.

1961: Cuban leader Fidel Castro offersd to release prisoners captured in the Bay of Pigs invasion in exchange for 500 bulldozers. The prisoners are eventually freed in exchange for medical supplies.

1973: A special committee convened by the US Senate begins its televised hearings into the Watergate scandal.

1980: Rioting that claimed 18 lives erupts in Miami’s Liberty City after an all-white jury in Tampa acquitted four former Miami police officers of fatally beating black insurance executive Arthur McDuffie.

1983: Israel and Lebanon reach an agreement on the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon. The pullback starts in September.

1987: Some 37 American sailors are killed when an Iraqi warplane attacked the US Navy frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf. Iraq apologises for the attack, calling it a mistake, and paid more than US$27 million in compensation.

1988: Fighting rages in Lebanon despite peace efforts by Syria and Iran.

1990: Two messianic Jews confess to desecrating 300 Jewish graves in Haifa, Israel, in hopes Arabs would be blamed.

1993: Rebels call strike that cripples public transport and shuts down business in Lima, Peru.

1994: Malawi voters stream from impoverished villages to take part in first multiparty election in three decades.

1995: Jacques Chirac becomes France’s president with a promise to rejuvenate a nation scarred by unemployment and inequality.

1996: US President Bill Clinton signs a measure requiring neighbourhood notification when sex offenders move in. (“Megan’s Law”, as it’s known, was named for Megan Kanka, a seven-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and murdered in 1994.)

1997: Zaire’s new leader Laurent Kabila renames the nation the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

1999: Labour party candidate Ehud Barak wins a decisive victory in Israeli elections over hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

2000: Indonesia’s first human rights trial convicts 24 soldiers and a civilian of murdering dozens of villagers during a massacre in Aceh province in 1999.

2001: The UN conference on poverty announces the launch of the World Trade University, a new university to give the world’s poor access to training in international trade and finance.

2003: Sri Lanka’s heaviest rains in 50 years causes flash flooding that kills an estimated 250 people and washes away whole villages, destroying about 55,000 homes. About 150,000 people are made homeless.

2004: Gay couples begin exchanging marriage vows in Massachusetts, marking the first time a US state has granted gays and lesbians the right to marry.

2006: The UN Security Council adopts a resolution pressing Syria to establish diplomatic relations and set its border with Lebanon as “a significant step” to asserting Beirut’s sovereignty. The FBI begins digging at a Michigan horse farm in search of the remains of former Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa; the two-week search yielded no evidence. It was announced that Paul McCartney and his second wife, Heather Mills McCartney have agreed to separate. Broadway producer Cy Feuer dies in New York at age 95.

2007: Russian Orthodox leaders sign a pact to heal an 80-year schism between the church in Russia and an offshoot set up abroad, which split off in anger when the Russian church declined to defy the communist Government.

2008: Assassination threats derail plans by Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to return home to campaign for the presidential run-off vote.

2009: Tamil Tigers admit defeat in their fierce, quarter-century war for a separate homeland as government forces race to clear last pockets of resistance in northern Sri Lanka.

2010: The last of 10 Americans detained while trying to take 33 children out of Haiti after the January 12 earthquake is freed when a judge convicts her but sentences her to time already served in jail.

2011: US lawmakers warn Pakistan that billions of dollars in American aid are at stake if Islamabad does not step up its efforts against terrorists, a clear sign of the growing exasperation after the US takedown of Osama bin Laden deep inside Pakistan. Queen Elizabeth II begins the first visit by a British monarch to the Republic of Ireland, a four-day trip to highlight strong Anglo-Irish relations and the success of Northern Ireland’s peacemaking effort. Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issues a statement confirming a Los Angeles Times report that he had fathered a child with a woman on his household staff more than a decade earlier. (Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, had announced their separation on May 9, 2011.) Baseball Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew, 74, dies in Scottsdale, Arizona.

2015: A shoot-out erupts between bikers and police outside a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas, leaving nine of the bikers dead and 20 people injured. The contested city of Ramadi, capital of Iraq’s largest province, fell to the Islamic State group in a major loss despite intensified US-led air strikes. Pope Francis canonises Sisters Mariam Bawardy and Marie Alphonsine Ghattas, two nuns from what was 19th-century Palestine, in hopes of encouraging Christians across the Middle East who were facing a wave of persecution from Islamic extremists.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Actor Peter Gerety (1940- ); Singer Taj Mahal (1942- ); Rock musician Bill Bruford (1949- ); TV personality Kathleen Sullivan (1953- ); Actor Bill Paxton (1955-2017); Boxing Hall-of-Famer Sugar Ray Leonard (1956- ); Actor-comedian Bob Saget (1956- ); Sports announcer Jim Nantz (1959- ); Singer Enya (1961- ); Talk show host-actor Craig Ferguson (1962- ); Actor Hill Harper (1949- ); Dancer-choreographer Derek Hough (huhf) (1985- ); Actor Tahj Mowry (1986- )

— AP