Today is the 279th day of 2021. There are 86 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1927: In the United States, the era of talking pictures arrives with the opening of The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, a movie which features both silent and sound-synchronised scenes.

OTHER EVENTS

1536: William Tyndale, who translated the first English Bible, is executed for heresy in Vilvoorde, the Netherlands.

1683: Thirteen families from Krefeld, Germany, arrive in present-day Philadelphia to begin Germantown, one of America’s oldest settlements.

1889: The Moulin Rouge in Paris opens its doors to the public; inventor Thomas Edison shows his first motion pictures in West Orange, New Jersey.

1908: Turkey grants concession to Germany to build a railroad to Ankara.

1918: French occupy Beirut in the Ottoman Empire.

1937: Japanese aggression in China is condemned by League of Nations.

1939: In an address to the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler denies having any intention of war against France and Britain.

1949: American-born Iva Toguri D’Aquino, convicted as Japanese wartime broadcaster “Tokyo Rose”, is sentenced in San Francisco to 10 years in prison and fined $10,000.

1953: Britain sends forces to British Guiana to prevent coup by communists.

1958: US nuclear submarine Seawolf surfaces off New England’s coast after establishing a world record by remaining submerged for two months.

1964: As Cambodia is dragged into the Vietnam war, China pledges to Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodian chief of state, that it will give his country economic and military aid.

1973: Egypt and Syria launch a surprise attack on Israel as it observes Yom Kippur.

1976: Coup in Thailand results in military takeover.

1979: Pope John Paul II becomes the first pontiff to visit the White House, where he is received by US President Jimmy Carter.

1981: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat is shot to death by extremists while reviewing a military parade.

1991: An Indonesia air force plane crashes into a government building in Jakarta, killing 102 people and injuring more than 5,000.

1992: The UN Security Council unanimously votes to create a war-crimes commission for Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1996: Yao Wenyaun, the last surviving member of the “Gang of Four”, which promoted class struggle under Chairman Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution, is freed from prison. In jail for 20 years, he was convicted in 1981 for plotting to seize power after Mao’s death in 1976.

1998: The UN Security Council declares that the Serbs have not complied with resolutions demanding a ceasefire in Kosovo, setting the stage for a military intervention in the Yugoslav province.

1999: Overwhelmed by rising waters on the Niger River, officials open the floodgates of two major dams, submerging 400 villages and leaving more than 300,000 homeless. Some 500 are believed drowned.

2000: An official inquiry into the infection of more than 200 Irish hemophiliacs with HIV and hepatitis C confirms that the government’s Blood Transfusion Service Board knowingly put them at risk in the early 1980s by selling infected blood products to hospitals.

2002: The Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite television network broadcast an audiotape made by Osama bin Laden where the speaker on the tape warned the US of future attacks.

2004: The European Union recommends setting mostly Muslim Turkey on a course for full membership in the union. The commissioners set stiff conditions to prevent far poorer Turkey from backtracking on the sweeping democratic and human rights reforms being demanded.

2005: Rescue workers dig through mud, searching for victims of landslides and pulling bodies from swollen rivers, after a week of steady rain in Central America and Mexico leaves more than 160 dead.

2007: Ruling-party lawmakers claim victory for Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf as voting ends in the presidential election.

2008: Wall Street joins in a worldwide cascade of despair over the financial crisis, driving the Dow Jones industrials to their biggest loss ever during a trading day. They close below 10,000 for the first time since 2004.

2009: A top suspect wanted for orchestrating the killings of thousands of people in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide — including children, hospital patients, priests and even an elderly and revered African queen — is captured.

2010: A method for building complex molecules has paid off by helping to fight cancer, protect crops and make electronic devices; and now it has earned its developers, two Japanese scientists and an American researcher, a Nobel Prize.

2012: Israel scrambles fight jets to intercept a drone that crossed deep into Israeli airspace from the Mediterranean sea, shooting the aircraft down over the country’s southern desert.

2013: Clashes erupt across much of Egypt between security forces and supporters of the ousted president, leaving 44 dead as rival crowds of supporters of the military and backers of the Islamist Mohammed Morsi it deposed pour into the streets around the country to mark a major holiday.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Louis Philippe, king of France (1773-1850); Jenny Lind, Swedish soprano (1820-1887); Charles Edouard Jeanneret, Swiss architect known as “Le Corbusier” (1887-1965); Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian anthropologist and leader of Kon-Tiki expedition (1914-2002); Hafez Assad, former Syrian president (1930-2000); Britt Ekland, Swedish actress (1942- ); Elizabeth Shue, American actress (1963- )

— AP