Today is the 155th day of 2021. There are 210 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2001: Nepal’s Crown Prince Dipendra dies. Three days earlier he shot the king, queen, and seven members of the royal family before turning the gun on himself.

OTHER EVENTS

1783: The Montgolfier brothers fly a hot-air balloon with no passengers in it publicly, for the first time, on a 10-minute flight from the marketplace in their hometown of Annonay, France.

1805: United States concludes a favourable peace treaty with the pirates of Tripoli.

1859: Austrians are defeated at Magenta by French, who free Milan in Italy.

1878: Turkey turns Cyprus over to the British.

1896: Henry Ford makes a successful pre-dawn test run of his horseless carriage, called a quadricycle, through the streets of Detroit.

1940: The Allied evacuation from Dunkirk, France, is completed. In a week, a flotilla of navy and civilian ships saved 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian troops from the invading Germans.

1942: Battle of Midway begins in the Pacific with US ships inflicting the first decisive defeat of the Japanese.

1943: Troops march into Buenos Aires and overthrow Government of Argentina President Ramon Castillo.

1944: Allied forces enter Rome in World War II.

1954: French Premier Joseph Laniel and Vietnamese Premier Buu Loc initial treaties in Paris granting “complete independence” to Vietnam.

1956: Egypt announces it will not extend Suez Canal Company’s concession after expiration in 1959, leading to Suez Crisis.

1970: Kingdom of Tonga in Pacific becomes member of British Commonwealth.

1974: Death toll from smallpox is listed as at least 10,000 in the Indian state of Bihar, one of the worst epidemics since vaccination began.

1989: First partially free parliamentary elections in Poland in nearly 50 years end Moscow-imposed communist rule.

1992: Russia and other former Soviet republics pledge to slash tanks and other weapons in a landmark arms control accord.

1993: The UN Security Council authorises the United States and its allies to use air strikes against Serbian forces besieging six Muslim enclaves in Bosnia.

1994: Five Iraqis and a Kuwaiti are sentenced to death in Kuwait for plotting to kill former US President George H W Bush with a car bomb during his visit to Kuwait in 1993.

1997: The UN Security Council extends the programme that allows Iraq to sell oil to buy food, medicine, and other civilian supplies.

2002: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says that shortly before September 11, 2001, Egyptian intelligence officials warned the United States that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on an American target.

2003: The Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up to try war crimes suspects from the country’s civil conflict, make public a 17-count indictment against Charles Taylor, the president of neighbouring Liberia.

2004: UN peacekeepers take control of a strategic eastern Congolese city as renegade soldiers withdraw and President Joseph Kabila attempts to calm the nation after the largest and most violent protests since he took office.

2007: Former Liberian President Charles Taylor boycotts opening of his war crimes trial at The Hague. Court rules that the trial continue despite his boycott.

2008: The US military orders navy ships loaded with relief aid off Myanmar’s coast to leave the area after the country’s xenophobic junta refused to let them help survivors of a devastating cyclone the previous month.

2010: South Korea officially refers North Korea to the UN Security Council over the sinking of a navy ship that killed 46 sailors, taking its strongest step ever toward making the communist North face international punishment.

2011: An al-Qaeda leader sought in the 2008 siege in Mumbai, India, and rumoured to be a long-shot choice to succeed Osama bin Laden is believed killed in a US drone attack as he met with other militants in an apple orchard in Pakistan.

2014: Syrian President Bashar Assad is re-elected in a landslide, capturing another seven-year term in the middle of a bloody uprising against his rule that has devastated the country.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

England’s King George III (1738-1820); Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, Finnish marshal and statesman (1867-1951); Modibo Keita, president of Mali (1915-1977); Robert Merrill, US opera singer (1919-2004); Dennis Weaver, US actor (1924-2006); Bruce Dern, US actor (1936- ); Angelina Jolie, US actress (1975-); Noah Wyle, US actor (1971- ); Russell Brand, British actor/comedian (1975- )