This is the 159th day of 2022. There are 206 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1994: Two months after the start of the carnage in Rwanda, the United Nations Security Council approves the dispatch of 5,500 peacekeepers with a timid mandate to protect humanitarian aid, but not to stop the slaughter.

OTHER EVENTS

632: The prophet Muhammad dies in Medina. He leaves no arrangement for his succession, creating a rift in Islam lasting to this day.

1504: Michelangelo’s statue of David, commissioned in 1501 and considered the prime statement of the Renaissance ideal of perfect humanity, is installed in 1504 in the cathedral of Florence.

1762: Russo-Prussian alliance against Austria is concluded.

1783: Laki volcano in southern Iceland begins 8-month eruption, killing 10,000 and causing widespread famines throughout Asia and Europe.

1869: The suction vacuum cleaner is patented by Ives McGaffey of Chicago.

1883: France, by Convention of Marsa with Bey of Tunis, gains effective control of Tunisia.

1915: Allied forces take Neuville in France from Germans in World War I.

1917: Walt Disney graduates from Benton High School.

1925: Britain and France accept, in principle, Germany’s proposals for security pact to guarantee Franco-German and Belgo-German boundaries.

1934: Dorothy Dell, American child actress (Little Miss Marker, Wharf Angel), dies in a road accident at 19.

1942: Japanese submarines shell Sydney, Australia, in World War II. Bing Crosby records Silent Night.

1949: British author George Orwell publishes his dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-four, a warning against totalitarianism that introduced such concepts as Big Brother and the Thought Police.

1952 American singer and actress Judy Garland, at 29, weds 36-year-old American producer Sidney Luft in Hollister, California; they divorce in 1965.

1965: US troops in Vietnam are authorised to engage in offensive operations.

1969: Major League Baseball legend Mickey Mantle gives his farewell retirement speech during ‘Mickey Mantle Day’ at Yankee Stadium; 60,096 people witness his number seven being retired.

1976: Large force of Syrian troops moves into Lebanon, where civil war rages.

1978: A jury in Clark County, Nevada, rules the so-called “Mormon will”, purportedly written by the late billionaire Howard Hughes, is a forgery.

1982: President Ronald Reagan becomes the first American chief executive to address a joint session of the British Parliament.

1987: New Zealand’s Labour Government legislates against nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered vessels in that country. The nation is the only one to legislate against nuclear power.

1988: Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze tells United Nations that Moscow will observe a moratorium on nuclear testing if United States also agrees.

1990: Vaclav Havel is elected president in Czechoslovakia’s first free elections in 44 years.

1992: Delegates at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, approve new United Nations body to monitor compliance with environmental treaties.

1993: Rene Bousquet, former head of police in Vichy France, is killed in his Paris apartment by a gunman on the eve of his war crimes trial.

1996: China sets off an underground nuclear test blast.

1998: Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha dies suddenly of a heart attack, opening the way for democracy in the country.

2001: Japan is shocked when a man stabs and kills eight children and wounds 15 teachers and students at a school in Ikeda.

2002: Serena Williams defeats her sister Venus Williams to win her first French Open tennis title.

2003 The Sopranos actor Dominic Chianese weds United Nations conference planner Jane Pittson in Manhattann.

2004: TLC singer Tionne Watkins divorces rapper Mack 10 due to adultery after nearly 4 years of marriage.

2005: Ethiopian police open fire on stone-throwing protesters in the centre of the capital, killing 22 people and wounding hundreds as unrest mounts over the ruling party’s claim of victory in recent elections.

2006: The US Food and Drug Administration approves Gardasil, a vaccine against HPV, the virus that causes cervical cancer. Sheikha Haya Al Khalifa, a lawyer from Bahrain, is elected UN General Assembly president, the first woman from the Middle East to take the post.

2009: The United Nations hosts its first World Oceans Day which seeks to celebrate oceans while also raising awareness of the threats that they and their marine ecosystems face.

2010: US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says proposed new UN sanctions against Iran’s suspect nuclear programme will be the toughest ever adopted.

2011: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, increasingly cornered under a stunning upturn in NATO air strikes, lashes back with renewed shelling of the western city of Misrata, killing 10 rebel fighters.

2013: US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping end a two-day summit in the California desert with few policy breakthroughs, though the prospect exists of stronger personal ties. Princess Madeleine of Sweden weds banker Christopher O’Neill at The Royal Palace Church in Stockholm, Sweden.

2014: Egypt’s former military leader is sworn into office as president nearly a year after he ousts the nation’s first freely elected leader.

2015: Acknowledging setbacks, President Barack Obama says at the close of a G-7 summit in Germany that the United States still lacks a “complete strategy” for training Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State. Siding with the White House in a foreign policy power struggle with Congress, the Supreme Court rules 6-3 that Americans born in the disputed city of Jerusalem cannot list Israel as their birthplace on passports.

2018: American chef and television personality Anthony Bourdain, who helped popularise “foodie” culture in the early 21st century through his books and television programmes, dies by suicide at the age of 61.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Giovanni Cassini, Italian astronomer (1625-1712); Robert Schumann, German composer (1810-1856); Frank Lloyd Wright, US architect (1869-1959); Francis Crick, biophysicist particularly known for determination of molecular structure of DNA (1916-2004 ); Suharto, second Indonesian president (1921-2008); Jerry Stiller, comedian (1927-2020); Joan Rivers, US comedian/talk show host (1933-2014); James Darren, US actor (1936- ); Nancy Sinatra, pop singer (1940- ); Sonia Braga, Brazilian actress (1950- ); Tim Berners-Lee, British computer scientist generally credited as World Wide Web inventor (1955- ) ; Julianna Margulies, US actress (1967- ); Kanye West, rapper, record producer, fashion designer, entrepreneur (1977- ).

— AP