Today is the 288th day of 2015. There are 77 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1968: Guyanese lecturer Walter Rodney is barred by the Jamaican Government from re-entering the country.

OTHER EVENTS

1529: Suleiman I, Sultan of Turkey, is forced to end siege of Vienna.

1583: The Gregorian calendar goes into effect in the Papal States by decree of Pope Gregory XIII and is soon adopted in other countries.

1917: Mata Hari, a Dutch dancer who spied for the Germans, is executed by a firing squad outside Paris.

1928: German dirigible Graf Zeppelin makes the first commercial flight across the Atlantic Ocean, landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in the US.

1945: The former premier of Vichy France, Pierre Laval, is executed.

1946: Former head of the Nazi air force, Hermann Goering, sentenced to death as a war criminal, commits suicide by poison hours before his scheduled execution.

1951: The situation comedy I Love Lucy starring Lucille Ball premieres in the United States on CBS television.

1964: Soviet leader Nikita S Khrushchev is removed from office and replaced as premier by Alexei N Kosygin and as Communist Party secretary by Leonid I Brezhnev.

1965: The first draft card is burned in the United States as an anti-Vietnam War protest.

1966: US President Lyndon B Johnson signs a Bill creating the Department of Transportation.

1968: Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia sign a treaty allowing Soviet troops to remain in Czechoslovakia.

1969: Somalia’s President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke is assassinated; US peace demonstrators stage activities across the country, including a candlelight march around the White House, as part of a moratorium against the Vietnam War.

1970: Canadian troops move into Montreal and Quebec City following upsurge of Quebec separatist terrorism.

1978: Syrian troops agree to withdraw from several key positions in Christian east Beirut under an agreement worked out by seven Arab nations.

1981: Two US surveillance planes arrive over Egyptian airspace to demonstrate increased US support for Egyptian and Sudanese security against any hostile moves by Libya.

1987: Fiji’s governor general resigns, ending decade of allegiance by the South Pacific island to British crown.

1989: Thousands of blacks hold “victory marches” in South Africa to celebrate the imminent release of eight political prisoners, including Walter Sisulu.

1990: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded Nobel Peace Prize.

1991: Clarence Thomas narrowly wins confirmation as a justice of the US Supreme Court, overcoming accusations of sexual harassment.

1992: Andrei Chikatilo is sentenced to die in Russia after committing at least 52 sadistic murders.

1993: US scientists report that gene therapy is effective in correcting the underlying molecular defect believed to cause cystic fibrosis.

1994: Democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returns to Haiti after US troops land there in September.

1996: Italy’s highest court orders the retrial of Erich Priebke, a former Nazi officer who was acquitted in World War II slaying of 335 civilians in Rome.

1997: Rebels, backed by foreign troops, enter Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, ending President Pascal Lissouba’s four-month struggle to remain in power.

1998: The Yugoslav military signs an accord allowing North Atlantic Treaty Organization air surveillance over rebellious Kosovo province.

1999: Pakistan’s army chief, General Pervez Musharraf, declares a state of emergency and names himself chief executive, two days after he and his troops oustthe democratically elected government in a bloodless coup.

2000: Oil companies evacuate 132 employees from Ecuador’s Amazon region after the kidnapping of 10 foreign oil workers.

2006: Thousands of people are evacuated from their homes in the central German city of Hanover as experts dispose of three freshly unearthed World War II bombs.

2008: Thousands of Christians from around the world march in a colourful holiday parade in Jerusalem to commemorate a Jewish holiday and show their support for Israel.

2010: Workers hug, cheer and set off fireworks as the huge drill breaks through the last stretch of rock deep in the Swiss Alps. There is delight at the end of the tunnel — the world’s longest — when it is completed.

2011: The United States raises the tempo in its war against al-Qaeda in Yemen, killing nine of the terror group’s militants in the second, high-profile airstrike in as many weeks. The dead in the strike include the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, the prominent American-Yemeni militant killed in a September 30 attack.

2012: In interviews with CNN and Fox News, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton takes responsibility for security at the US consulate in Libya, where the US ambassador and three other Americans were killed in a September 11, 2012, attack.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Virgil, Roman poet (70 BC-19 BC); Evangelista Torricelli, Italian inventor of barometer (1608-1647); Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844-1900); P(elham) G(renville) Wodehouse, British-American writer (1881-1975); Richard Carpenter, US singer/drummer (1946- ); Penny Marshall, US actress/director (1943-2018 )

— AP

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1999: The monuments to the Right Excellent Nanny of the Maroons and Samuel Sharpe are dedicated in National Heroes’ Park in Kingston, Jamaica.

OTHER EVENTS

1066: Normans under William the Conqueror defeat the English in the Battle of Hastings.

1529: Turkish Ottoman ruler Sultan Suleyman II ends the first Turkish siege of Vienna.

1806: Napoleon Bonaparte defeats Prussians at Jena, and Saxons at Auerstadt.

1912: Theodore Roosevelt, campaigning for the US presidency, is shot in the chest in Milwaukee. The bullet hit a metal eyeglasses case and a thick paper copy of a speech he is to give, making the wound relatively shallow, and he goes ahead with the scheduled speech.

1933: Germany leaves disarmament conference and League of Nations.

1936: Belgium renounces military alliance with France.

1939: A German submarine sinks the British battleship Royal Oak in Scapa Flow, with loss of 833 lives.

1944: British and Greek troops liberate Athens from Germans; German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commits suicide rather than face execution for allegedly conspiring against Adolf Hitler.

1947: US Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than sound as he tests a rocket-powered research plane over California.

1960: The idea of a Peace Corps is first suggested by Democratic US presidential candidate John F Kennedy to an audience of students at University of Michigan.

1964: US civil rights leader Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1968: The first live telecast from a manned US spacecraft is transmitted from Apollo 7.

1973: Sanya Thammasak, university administrator, is named premier of Thailand after violent clashes between troops and students.

1982: Vietnam turns over to US officials the remains of five Americans believed to have been murdered in Cambodia under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime.

1986: Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Elie Wiesel wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1987: Governor General Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau resigns after Fiji is declared a republic following two coups d’etats.

1989: Jordan officially launches its first national election campaign in 22 years.

1990: Israeli Government decides against cooperating with United Nations team investigating shooting deaths of 19 Palestinians at the Temple Mount.

1991: Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi wins Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve democracy in her homeland.

1992: A judge in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, convicts Andrei Chikatilo of the sex murders of 52 children and young women over a 12-year period. The horrific nature of the crimes makes Chikatilo one of the worst serial killers in history.

1993: Within hours of a United Nations police team pull-out of Haiti, gunmen assassinate Justice Minister Guy Malary, creating another setback to plans for ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s return.

1994: Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres share the Nobel Peace Prize with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

1995: Greece lifts its embargo on the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, which agrees to change its flag and declare that it has no claims on Greek territory.

1996: Truckloads of Taliban soldiers reinforce their battered defences north of Kabul, Afghanistan, after losing two strategic towns to former government soldiers.

1997: Dozens of protesters shouting “Clinton go home!” burn an effigy of US President Bill Clinton and throw manure on his limousine, marring an otherwise smooth visit to Brazil.

1998: Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate and a critic of the Nigerian Government, returns to his homeland for the first time in four years and is greeted by jubilant crowds.

1999: Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, the father of Tanzanian independence and a symbol of Africa’s hopes as it emerged from the shadow of colonial rule, dies at 77 of leukaemia.

2000: Alija Izetbegovic, who led the Bosnian Muslims through Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II, resigns from the Bosnian presidency, leaving power in a manner rare in the Balkans.

2002: Britain suspends the Northern Ireland Assembly, saying direct British rule was being introduced over the province because of “a loss of confidence on both sides of the community”. It was the fourth suspension since December 1999.

2003: John Allen Muhammad, one of two suspects in a series of October 2002 sniper shootings in the Washington, DC, area that killed 10 people and wounded three others, pleads not guilty to four murder charges.

2004: Soldiers attack kidnappers holding two Chinese engineers near the Afghan border, killing all five of the militants led by a former Guantanamo prisoner who Pakistani officials say has ties to al-Qaeda.

2005: The famed La Scala opera house closes its doors along with most other Italian theatres and cinemas as performers and staff go on strike against planned government budget cuts they say will cripple funding for the arts.

2006: The United Nations Security Council votes unanimously to impose punishing sanctions on North Korea for its claimed nuclear test, declaring that its action posed “a clear threat to international peace and security”.

2007: A landslide triggered by local residents digging for rumoured deposits of gold in an abandoned mine kills at least 21 people and injures 26 in southern Colombia.

2008: Syria formally recognises Lebanon by establishing diplomatic relations with the nation.

2009: Iraq’s Government says at least 85,000 Iraqis were killed from 2004 to 2008, officially answering one of the biggest questions of the conflict — how many perished in the sectarian violence that nearly led to a civil war?

2010: The United States endorses fragile Afghan efforts to negotiate peace with the Taliban, backing off its prior stance that talks with the Taliban were premature until the war is all but won.

2011: Britain’s Defence Minister Liam Fox quits his post after days of allegations about the influence-peddling of a close personal friend who joined key visits overseas and posed as an unofficial aide.

2012: Extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner lands gracefully on earth after a 24-mile (39-kilometre) jump from the stratosphere in a daring, dramatic feat that officials say made him the first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound.

2013: Gunmen in Syria release three Red Cross staffers and a Red Crescent volunteer who had been kidnapped in rebel-held territory.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Eamon de Valera, Irish statesman (1882-1975); Dwight D Eisenhower, US general and 34th US president (1890-1969); Mobuto Sese Seko, Zairian dictator (1930-1997), Cliff Richard, British singer (1940- ); Roger Moore, British actor (1927-2017); Marcia Barrett, original member of the group Boney M (1948- ); Allan “Skill” Cole, legendary footballer (1950- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer