TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1942: Navy Cook 3rd Class Doris “Dorie” Miller becomes the first African American to receive the Navy Cross for his “extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety” during Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour.

OTHER EVENTS

1647: The first recorded American execution of a “witch” takes place in Salem, Massachusetts.

1703: St Petersburg is founded by Peter the Great. It has played a vital role in Russian history and is especially known as the scene of the 1917 revolutions and as a fiercely defended city during World War II.

1889: American petrochemical corporation South Penn Oil Co, later Pennzoil Company, is founded in Pennsylvania.

1896: A tornado strikes St Louis and East St Louis, Illinois, USA, killing 255 people.

1905: Japanese annihilate Russian Baltic fleet of 35 ships in Tsushima Straits off Korea, ending the Russo-Japanese war and forcing the European powers to treat Japan as an equal.

1933: The Chicago World’s Fair, celebrating ‘A Century of Progress’, officially opens. Walt Disney’s Academy Award-winning animated short The Three Little Pigs is first released.

1935: The US Supreme Court, in Schechter Poultry Corp v United States, unanimously strikes down the National Industrial Recovery Act, a key component of President Franklin D Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ legislative programme.

1936: The Cunard liner RMS Queen Mary leaves England on its maiden voyage to New York. The first Aer Lingus flight takes place as a de Havilland Dragon carries five passengers from Dublin to Bristol, England.

1937: The Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County, California, is opened to public pedestrian traffic (vehicles begin crossing the next day).

1941: German battleship Bismarck is sunk by British Navy off France in World War II, with loss of 2,300 lives.

1964: Former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a leader of the Indian independence movement of the 1930s and 40s, dies in New Delhi.

1971: Soviet Union signs 15-year pact with Egypt, pledging assistance in recovery of all Arab territories occupied by Israel.

1977: British punk band the Sex Pistols release their second single, God Save the Queen which is quickly banned by the BBC and other outlets in England.

1979: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin announce the opening of the border between Egypt and Israel.

1985: In Beijing, representatives of Britain and China exchange instruments of ratification for an accord returning Hong Kong to Chinese control in 1997.

1990: More than 72 per cent of Myanmar’s eligible voters turn out to elect a new parliament. The military never allows them to convene, and continues to rule the country as they have since overthrowing the last democratic Government in a 1962 coup.

1991: Kuwait’s Opposition leaders meet with the emir to demand that the constitution be restored and an end be put to martial law imposed after Iraq invaded the country.

1993: A terrorist bomb goes off in Florence, damaging a wing of the famous Uffizi Gallery.

1994: Exiled from the Soviet Union since February 13, 1974 for writing The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who won the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature, returns to his Russian homeland.

1996: Russian President Boris Yeltsin negotiates a ceasefire to the war in Chechnya in his first meeting with the rebels’ leader.

1998: Japan’s Emperor Akihito speaks sympathetically of the suffering of Britain’s former World War II POWs as they protest his visit to England.

1999: The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands, announces the indictment of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four of his aides for war crimes in Kosovo. It is the first time a sitting head of State is indicted for war crimes.

2000: Northern Ireland’s major Protestant party narrowly votes to revive a power-sharing government with Catholics, the key goal of the province’s 1998 peace agreement. Canadian ice hockey player Maurice “Rocket” Richard, who helped the Montreal Canadiens win eight Stanley Cups while becoming the first NHL player to score 500 goals, dies at age 78.

2001: Occupants of Kariwa, a Japanese village, home to the world’s largest nuclear power plant, vote against a proposal to use recycled plutonium at the facility. The referendum is the first-ever on one of Japan’s most contentious energy policies.

2002: Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf delivers a nationally televised address on the threat of war with India over Kashmir. India has 750,000 troops on the border and Pakistan has 250,000.

2009: North Korea threatens military strikes on US, South Korean ships and renounces a 1953 truce agreement halting the Korean War fighting, an escalation of tensions in the wake of Pyongyang’s nuclear test.

2010: US activist Lori Berenson walks out of prison in Peru smiling but gets a chilly reception from her new neighbours after serving three-quarters of a 20-year sentence for aiding leftist rebels.

2011: Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic is captured in a routine raid as he headed out to his garden for a pre-dawn walk in the tiny northern Serbian village of Lazarevo.

2018: South Korean boy band BTS are the first K-pop group to top the US Billboard 200 with their album Love Yourself: Tear.

2020: American writer and gay rights activist Larry Kramer — whose confrontational style of advocacy, while divisive, was credited by many with catalysing the response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States — dies at age 84.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Ibn Khaldun, Arab historian (1332-1406); Julia Ward Howe, American author and lecturer who was best known for the hymn Battle Hymn of the Republic (1819-1910); Wild Bill Hickok, US sheriff (1837-1876); Cornelius Vanderbilt, US shipping/railroad magnate (1794-1877); Isadora Duncan, US dancer (1878-1927); Rachel Carson, US biologist/writer (1907-1964); Vincent Price, US actor (1911-1993); Hubert Humphrey, American Democratic politician (1911-1978); Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state (1923- ); Pat Cash, Australian tennis champion (1965- ); Jamie Oliver, British TV chef (1975- ); Paul Bettany, British actor (1971- ); Andre 3000, US rapper (1975- ).

— AP