Today is the 298th day of 2021. There are 67 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1983: US Marines and Rangers, assisted by soldiers from six Caribbean nations, invade Grenada at the order of US President Ronald Reagan, who says the action is needed to protect US citizens there.

OTHER EVENTS

1415: The English defeat a vastly greater French force at the Battle of Agincourt.

1586: Mary Queen of Scots, the focus of Catholic plots on the throne of England, is sentenced to death.

1616: Dutch mariner Dirk Hartog discovers Australia.

1760: Britain’s King George III succeeds his late grandfather, George II.

1794: Russia withdraws from war against France.

1812: The US frigate SS United States captures the British vessel Macedonian during the war of 1812.

1815: Serb rebellion against Turkish rule begins, resulting in considerable autonomy for Serbs.

1874: Britain annexes Fiji islands.

1900: Transvaal is annexed formally by Britain at Pretoria, South Africa.

1909: Murder of Japan’s Prince Ito by Korean fanatics leads to Japanese dictatorship in Korea.

1918: The Canadian steamship Princess Sophia founders off the coast of Alaska; nearly 400 people perish.

1922: Fascists march on Rome and the Italian king nominates Benito Mussolini as prime minister.

1951: In a general election, England’s Labour Party loses to Conservatives. Winston Churchill becomes prime minister, and Anthony Eden becomes foreign secretary.

1971: The UN General Assembly votes to admit mainland China and expel Taiwan.

1995: Israeli troops start pulling out from Jenin on the West Bank, the first city to be handed over under the Israel-Palestine Liberation Organization autonomy agreement.

1996: The fundamentalist Islamic Taliban militia claim to capture another Afghanistan province, their first advance since seizing the capital, Kabul, a month earlier.

1998: Two days after a peace accord with the Israelis, street battles rage in the West Bank between members of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s political faction and Palestinian security forces.

2001: The US House of Representatives approves legislation that will give law enforcement and intelligence agencies broader powers to investigate suspected terrorists.

2003: Russia’s Federal Security Service arrests billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chief executive officer of top-ranked Russian oil conglomerate OAO Yukos. The arrest spurs a sharp drop in the Russian stock market as investors anticipate a crackdown on private business interests.

2005: Election officials in Baghdad announce that Iraq’s landmark constitution has been adopted by a majority of voters during the country’s referendum. Results show that Sunni Arabs, who had sharply opposed the draft document, failed to produce enough “no” votes to defeat it.

2008: Egypt’s first female marriage registrar starts work despite complaints by some conservative clerics that the move is against Islam.

2009: A pair of suicide car bombings devastate the heart of Iraq’s capital, killing at least 147 people in the country’s deadliest attack in more than two years. The bombs call into question Iraq’s ability to protect its people as US forces withdraw.

2011: Distraught Turkish families mourn outside a mosque or seek to identify loved ones among rows of bodies as rescue workers scour debris for survivors after a 7.2-magnitude quake that killed at least 279 people in the eastern part of the country near the Iranian border.

2012: The scale of the child sex abuse scandal engulfing the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) expands as authorities announce that 300 potential victims had come forward with accusations against one of the British broadcaster’s most popular children’s entertainers and that others might have acted with him.

2019: A 40-day strike that crippled General Motors’ US production comes to an end as workers approve a new contract.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Thomas B Macauley, British historian (1800-1859); Georges Bizet, French composer (1838-1875); Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor (1881-1973); Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, American polar explorer (1888-1957); former King Michael of Romania (1925-2017)

— AP