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

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2003: Sierra Leonean rebel leader Foday Sankoh, who had been in United Nations custody since 2000 and was awaiting trial on charges of mass murder and other crimes, dies at a hospital in Freetown after a stroke. 

OTHER EVENT

1499: Lepanto in Greece surrenders to forces of Turkey’s Sultan.

1588: The English defeat the Spanish Armada in the Battle of Gravelines.

1656: Poles under John Casimir are defeated at Warsaw by combined Swedish-Brandenburg force.

1696: Russian forces of Peter the Great take Azov from the Turks.

1858: United States and Japan sign their first commercial treaty.

1900: Italy’s King Humbert I is assassinated by an anarchist.

1914: Transcontinental telephone service begins with the first phone conversation between New York and San Francisco.

1921: All-India Congress decides to boycott Prince of Wales’ visit to India.

1922: Allied powers issue ultimatum forbidding Greeks to occupy Istanbul in Turkey.

1937: Japanese seize Tianjin in China. Eighteen-year-old Crown Prince Farouk is crowned king of Egypt.

1940: Germany’s aerial blitz against Britain begins during World War II.

1941: Vichy France and Japan sign agreement for “joint protection” of Indochina. This allows France to continue administering colonies, but Japan sends in troops.

1957: US President Dwight D Eisenhower signs an act to create NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

1968: Pope Paul VI reaffirms the Roman Catholic Church’s stance against artificial methods of birth control.

1973: Voters in Greece endorse decisions by their leaders to abolish Greek monarchy and install George Papadopoulos as president.

1975: President Gerald Ford is the first US president to visit Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland.

1986: South Africa’s President P W Botha rejects British foreign secretary’s plea for unconditional release of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela.

1993: Israeli Supreme Court rules Ukrainian-born American John Demjanjuk was not guard known as “Ivan The Terrible” at Treblinka Nazi death camp in Poland.

1995: Egyptian Government arrests at least 200 activists of the Muslim Brotherhood, the mainstream Islamic Opposition movement.

1996: China conducts a nuclear test, but promises it will join a moratorium on further tests.

1997: The waters off Minamata, Japan, are declared free of mercury 65 years after a local factory started dumping waste that caused one of the worst environmental disasters ever.

1998: A former Cabinet minister of Spain and 11 others are convicted of kidnapping, concluding a trial that exposed the former Government’s role in death squads that targeted Basque separatists.

2006: Sri Lanka’s air force bombs Tamil Tiger rebel positions for a fourth day, killing seven rebels and wounding 14 in spiralling violence that threatened to drag the country back into full-blown civil war.

2007: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling party suffers a humiliating defeat in parliamentary elections, one of the Liberal Democratic Party’s worst showings in its almost five-decade rule.

2008: The Bosnian war crimes court convicts seven Bosnian Serbs of genocide in the 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica, and hands down prison sentences ranging from 38 to 42 years.

2010: Poll shows Pakistanis have an overwhelmingly negative view of the United States despite billions in aid from Washington and a shared threat from extremists.

2013: Gays in the United States and elsewhere propose boycotts and other tactics to convey their outrage over Russia’s intensifying campaign against gay rights activism.

2014: US, Europe order tough new economic, energy and defense sanctions on Russia over Ukraine. 

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Alexis de Toqueville, French political scientist (1805-1859); Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator (1883-1945); Booth Tarkington, US novelist (1869-1946), Sigmund Romberg, Hungarian-born composer (1887-1951); Dag Hammarskjold, Swedish UN secretary general and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1905-1961); Clara Bow, US actress (1905-1965), Mikis Theodorakis, Greek composer (1925- ); Peter Jennings, Canadian-born ABC newsman (1938-2005), Ken Burns, US documentary film-maker (1953- ), Martina McBride, US country singer (1966- )

— AP