Today is the 70th day of 2022. There are 295 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2020: The World Health Organization declares that the novel coronavirus outbreak is a pandemic.

OTHER EVENTS

1302: Romeo and Juliet’s wedding day, according to Shakespeare.

1812: King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia gives Jewish citizens equal rights.

1888: The “Blizzard of 88” strikes the north-eastern United States, piling up snow up to 6 metres (20 feet) deep and resulting in some 400 deaths.

1917: British forces capture Baghdad during World War I.

1941: US President Franklin D Roosevelt signs into law the Lend-Lease Bill, providing war supplies to countries fighting the Axis.

1943: British Eighth Army repulses heavy German counter-attacks in Tunisia in World War II.

1959: Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun becomes the first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.

1965: A white minister from Boston, the Rev James J Reeb, dies after whites beat him during civil rights demonstrations in Selma, Alabama.

1985: Politburo leader Mikhail S Gorbachev is chosen to succeed the late Soviet President Konstantin U Chernenko.

1888: A winter storm begins on the Atlantic coast of the United States, ultimately blanketing New York City with 22 inches (550 mm) of snow and other areas with up to 50 inches (1,250 mm); the Great Blizzard of 1888, as it became known, killed more than 400 people and caused widespread property damage.

1990: Following a vote in the parliament, Lithuania becomes the first Soviet republic to declare its independence from the USSR.

1994: The Church of England ordains its first women priests.

1998: South Korea says it will compensate women who were enslaved in Japanese army brothels in World War II, then recover the money from Japan.

2002: Fifteen are killed and more than 50 others injured in a fire and stampede at a girls’ school in Saudi Arabia, sparking an outcry after religious police prevented male firefighters and paramedics from rescuing the girls because they were not wearing the black head-to-toe covering required by Saudi law.

2004: A series of bombs hidden in backpacks blow apart four commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, killing at least 199 people and wounding more than 1,400 in the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history.

2006: Chilean politician Michelle Bachelet became the first woman to serve as the country’s president as she was sworn into office. Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, being tried at The Hague for war crimes after orchestrating a decade of bloodshed that killed 250,000 people and broke up his country, is found dead after a heart attack in his prison cell.

2008: The Belgian Government and banks agree to pay US$170 million (euro110 million) to Holocaust survivors, families of victims and the Jewish community for losses during World War II. About half of the 50,000 Jews in Belgium were exterminated in the Holocaust.

2009: A 17-year-old wielding a Beretta 9m pistol bursts into a classroom in his former high school in Germany and guns down students in a rampage that leaves 15 dead before he takes his own life.

2011: An earthquake strikes off the north-eastern coast of Honshu, Japan, causing widespread damage in the country and triggering a devastating tsunami that instigated a major nuclear accident.

2012: A US Army sergeant opens fire on Afghan villagers as they sleep, killing 16 people — mostly women and children — in an attack that reignites fury at the US presence following a wave of deadly protests over Americans burning Qurans.

2015: The European Union studies new ways to beef up border patrols in the face of an unprecedented influx of migrants crossing the Mediterranean and travelling through the Balkans.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Torquato Tasso, Italian poet (1544-1595); Louis Florence d’Epinay, French author (1726-1783); Christian Ditlev, Count Reventlow, Danish statesman who abolished serfdom (1748-1827); Astor Piazzolla, Argentine musician (1921-1992); Douglas Adams, British writer (1952-2001); Rupert Murdoch, Australian media magnate (1931- ); Alex Kingston, British actress (1963- ); Terrence Howard, US actor (1969- )

— AP