Today is the 160th day of 2022. There are 205 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2008: Scientists at a US government weapons laboratory announce they have built the world’s fastest computer, capable of sustaining 1,000 trillion operations per second. It will be used to help maintain the US nuclear weapons stockpile.

OTHER EVENTS

68AD: Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide after being ousted in a military coup, imploring his secretary Epaphroditos to slit his throat to evade a Senate-imposed death by flogging.

1358: The Jacquerie, a revolt of French peasants against abuses inflicted upon them by the nobility of north-eastern France, suffers a critical defeat at Meaux.

1549: Book of Common Prayer is adopted by the Church of England

1752: French forces at Trichinopoly, now Tiruchchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India, surrender to British.

1815: The Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, comprising several agreements separately negotiated among various participants for the reorganization of Europe in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, was signed by representatives of Austria, France, Great Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden.

1856: 500 Mormons leave Iowa City, Iowa, and head west for Salt Lake City, Utah, carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts

1870: English writer Charles Dickens, generally considered the greatest Victorian novelist, dies at Gad’s Hill near Chatham, Kent.

1934: The first Walt Disney animated cartoon featuring Donald Duck, The Wise Little Hen, is released.

1942: Residents of the village of Lidice (now in the Czech Republic) are rounded up, most to be massacred the next day in reprisal for the assassination by Czech underground fighters of Reinhard Heydrich, deputy leader of the Nazi paramilitary group SS.

1943: The US federal government begins withholding income tax from pay cheques.

1944: President Franklin D Roosevelt agrees to receive General de Gaulle in Washington for conversations on military and civil matters pertaining to France.

1945: Marshal Zhukov says Adolf Hitler had married Eva Braun two days before Berlin’’s fall and that Russians “found no corpse that could be Hitler’s.”

Warner Bros cartoon A Gruesome Twosome starring Tweety premieres in USA.

1946: Bhumibol Adulyadej becomes king of Thailand at age 18, beginning a reign that continues to this day.

1946: Ananda Mahidol, the young king of Thailand who had recently returned to take up his duties, is found dead in his bed with a gunshot wound.

1962: Singer Tony Bennett makes his Carnegie Hall concert debut, NYC.

1967: Gamal Abdel Nasser resigns as president of Egypt after his country is defeated in Six-Day War with Israel.

1970: Bob Dylan given honorary Doctorate of Music at Princeton University.

1973: American racehorse Secretariat wins the Belmont Stakes, by an unprecedented 31 lengths, to capture the Triple Crown; he earlier had won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes to become horse racing’s first Triple Crown winner in 25 years.

1985: American educator Thomas Sutherland is kidnapped in Lebanon by members of Islamic Jihad; he is released in November 1991 along with fellow hostage Terry Waite.

1986: The Rogers Commission releases its report on the Challenger disaster, criticising NASA and rocket-builder Morton Thiokol for management problems leading to the explosion that claimed the lives of seven astronauts.

1991: King Hussein and Jordanian politicians sign a document to revive multiparty democracy 34 years after political parties were banned.

1994: Fire destroys the Georgia mansion of Atlanta Falcons receiver Andre Rison; his girlfriend, rap singer Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, a member of the famous girl group TLC, admits causing the blaze after a fight and was later sentenced to probation.

1996: Iraqi officials and UN experts begin dismantling a major biological weapons factory outside Baghdad.

2000: France and Germany agree to strengthen a common European defence that will be less dependent on the United States.

2001: Iranian President Mohammed Khatami wins re-election with a landslide 75 per cent of the vote. The mandate points toward the people’s unmistakable demand that conservative clerics must loosen their grip on Iran.

2003: Britain decides to delay adopting the euro — the European Union’s single currency.

2008: American baseball player Ken Griffey, Jr hits his 600th career home run, becoming the sixth player in major league history to accomplish the feat.

2011: Alabama passes a tough law against illegal immigration, requiring schools to find out if students are in the country lawfully and making it a crime to knowingly give an illegal immigrant a ride. (Federal courts have since blocked parts of the law.)

2012: Europe is to offer Spain a bailout package of up to euro 100 billion (US$125 billion) to help rescue the country’s banks and keep the 17-nation Eurozone from breaking apart.

2013: A 29-year-old intelligence analyst who claims to have worked at the National Security Agency and the CIA is revealed as the source of The Guardian’s and The Washington Post’s disclosures about the US Government’s secret surveillance programmes.

2014: The Pakistani Taliban threatens more violence after a five-hour assault on the nation’s busiest airport results in the deaths of 29 people — including all 10 attackers — raising a new challenge to the US ally trying to end years of fighting.

2019: Over 1 million people protest in Hong Kong over proposed new extradition laws to China in one of largest-ever protests in the city.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Peter the Great, czar of Russia (1672-1725); George Stephenson, English engineer, principal inventor of the locomotive (1781-1848); Otto Nicolai, German composer (1810-1849); Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, English physician (1836-1917); Cole Porter, US songwriter (1893-1964); Joe Santos, US actor (1936-2016); Michael J Fox, US actor (1961- ); Johnny Depp, US actor (1963- ); Natalie Portman, Israeli-US actress (1981- )

– AP