Today is the 165th day of 2022 There are 200 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1775: The Continental Army, forerunner of the United States Army, is created.

OTHER EVENTS

1381 Richard II in England meets leaders of the Peasants’ Revolt on Blackheath. The Tower of London is stormed by rebels who enter without resistance.

1623: The first breach-of-promise lawsuit in which Rev Gerville Pooley, Virginia files against Cicely Jordan; Pooley loses.

1642: The first compulsory education law in America is passed by Massachusetts.

1777: The Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, adopts the original design of the Stars and Stripes, specifying a flag containing 13 red and white stripes and 13 stars.

1801: Former American Revolutionary War general and notorious turncoat Benedict Arnold dies in London.

1834: Hardhat diving suit is patented by Leonard Norcross of Dixfield, Maine. Sandpaper is patented by Isaac Fischer Jr of Springfield, Vermont.

1841: The first Canadian Parliament opens in Kingston, Ontario.

1846: California (Bear Flag) Republic is proclaimed in Sonoma, declaring independence from Mexico.

1847: Robert Bunsen invents the Bunsen burner.

1872: Trade unions are legalised in Canada.

1881: Player piano is patented by John McTammany Jr (Cambridge, Massachusetts).

1900: Having been annexed to the USA on 12 August 1898, Hawaii is constituted as an organised territory.

1904: Dutch troops occupy Kuto Reh, Sumatra, killing all inhabitants. At the battle of Telissu, the Japanese rout the Russians and inflict heavy casualties.

1907: Norway adopts female suffrage for middle class women, but only in parliamentary elections.

1922: Warren G Harding becomes the first US president heard on radio as Baltimore station WEAR broadcasts his speech dedicating the Francis Scott Key memorial at Fort McHenry.

1923: The first country music hit (Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane) is recorded.

1934: Max Baer defeats Primo Carnera with an 11th-round TKO (techinical knockout) to win the world heavyweight boxing championship in Long Island City, New York.

1940: German troops enter Paris during World War II. On the same day, Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp opens in Nazi-controlled Poland with Polish POWs; it is later expanded to include civilian Jews and gypsies. (Approximately 3 million would die within its walls.)

1943: The US Supreme Court, in West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, rules 6-3 that public school students cannot be forced to salute the flag of the United States.

1949: Vietnamese State is established at Saigon under former Emperor Bao Dai.

1954: President Dwight D Eisenhower signs a measure adding the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.

1963: The Golden Girls actress Betty White (41) weds Password game show host Allen Ludden at the Sands Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

1967: British film To Sir, with Love, starring Sidney Poitier and directed by James Clavell, is first released in the United Sates. US Mariner spacecraft is launched toward Venus to discover if the planet can support life.

1972: The US Environmental Protection Agency orders a ban on domestic use of the pesticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), to take effect at year’s end.

1977: Alan Reed, American actor (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) and voice artist (Fred Flintstone, Lady and the Tramp), dies at 69. English model Twiggy Lawson, at 27), weds 45-year-old actor Michael Witney.

1982: Argentine forces surrender to British troops on the disputed Falkland Islands.

1985: The 17-day hijack ordeal of TWA Flight 847 begins as a pair of Lebanese Shiite Muslim extremists seize the jetliner shortly after takeoff from Athens, Greece.

1990: The US Supreme Court upholds, 6-3, police checkpoints that examine drivers for signs of intoxication.

1991: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves opens, directed by Kevin Reynolds and starring Morgan Freeman and Kevin Costner.

1993: Prince Norodom Sihanouk is reinstated as Cambodian head of state. Tansu Ciller becomes Turkey’s first female prime minister after being elected leader of the centre-right True Path Party.

1994: Iraq’s trade minister warns that farmers who do not sell their grain harvests to the State will have their hands cut off.

1997: Pol Pot is reported in Cambodia to be fleeing from the Khmer Rouge guerrillas he once commanded.

1999: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) peacekeepers in Kosovo discover the first mass grave, believed to contain 81 bodies, as Serb troops withdraw leaving the houses of ethnic Albanians in flames.

2000: In the biggest step toward peace since the end of the war, the leaders of North and South Korea sign an agreement to towards for reconciliation and reunification.

2003: East Timor approves a US$1.5-billion natural gas development plan for a pipeline to be built. It will be the largest source of income for impoverished East Timor.

2005: President Thabo Mbeki fires his deputy and heir apparent who was implicated in a corruption scandal, throwing open the question of who will become the next leader of South Africa when Mbeki steps down in 2009.

2006: More than 1,000 Indonesian villagers are forced to flee Mount Merapi’s slopes after searing hot gas and debris erups from the volcano. US President George W Bush, back from a surprise visit to Iraq, dismisses calls for a US withdrawal as election-year politics and refuses to give a timetable or benchmark for success that would allow the troops to come home.

2009: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorses a Palestinian State beside Israel, reversing himself in the face of US pressure but attaching conditions such as demilitarisation that Palestinians swiftly reject.

2010: Iraq’s new parliament convenes for just under 20 minutes in what is little more than a symbolic inaugural session because of unresolved differences over key government positions three months after inconclusive elections.

2011: President Barack Obama makes a four-hour visit to Puerto Rico, becoming the first president since John F Kennedy to make an official visit to the US territory. The long-delayed, problem-plagued musical, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark officially opens on Broadway.

2015: Thousands of Syrians cut through a border fence and cross over into Turkey, fleeing intense fighting in northern Syria between Kurdish fighters and jihadis. Inbee Park shoots a final-round 68 and finishes at 19-under par to win the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship for the third-consecutive year and retake the No 1 ranking in women’s golf. Jurassic World becomes the first film to make US$500 million worldwide in its opening weekend.

2017: A rifle-wielding gunman opens fire on Republican lawmakers at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, wounding House Whip Steve Scalise and several others; the assailant dies in a battle with police. Fire rips through the 24-story Grenfell Tower in West London, killing 71 people.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Harriet Beecher Stowe, US writer (1811-1896); John Bartlett, English writer/editor of Familiar Quotations (1820-1905); Gene Barry, US actor (1919-2009-); Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Argentine-born revolutionary (1928-1967); Jerzy Kosinski, Polish-born writer (1933-1991); Donald Trump, US president/TV personality (1946- ); Boy George, British pop singer (1961- ); Yasmine Bleeth, US actress (1968- ); Steffi Graf, German tennis champion (1969- ).

— AP