Today is the 187th day of 2022. There are 178 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2006: Surgeon General Richard Carmona issues a report which reveals that breathing any amount of someone else’s tobacco smoke harms non-smokers.

OTHER EVENTS

1787: English historian Edward Gibbon completes work on his six-volume The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

1801: Cairo surrenders to a British force.

1844: Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, is shot dead by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, along with his brother Hyrum.

1857: Massacre of Cawnpore, India, where British soldiers and male residents are executed after promise of safe conduct by the Indians.

1905: The Industrial Workers of the World is founded in Chicago.

1922: The first Newberry Medal, recognising excellence in children’s literature, is awarded to The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon.

1944: During World War II, American forces liberate the French port of Cherbourg from the Germans.

1946: Foreign ministers of Britain, United States, Soviet Union, and France transfer Dodecanese Islands from Italy to Greece, and areas of northern Italy to France.

1950: UN Secretary General Trygve Lie urges members of United Nations to assist South Korea in repelling North Korean attacks; US President Harry S Truman orders US Air Force and Navy into Korean conflict.

1957: More than 500 people are killed when Hurricane Audrey slams through coastal Louisiana and Texas.

1963: President John F Kennedy spends the first full day of a visit to Ireland, the land of his ancestors, stopping by the County Wexford home of his great-grandfather, Patrick Kennedy, who had emigrated to America in 1848.

1967: Police clash with patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. The incident becomes a focal point for gay rights advocates.

1972: Northern Ireland enjoys first day of peace in almost three years as Irish Republican Army begins ceasefire.

1977: French Somaliland becomes Africa’s 49th independent State, the Republic of Djibouti.

1986: The International Court of Justice at The Hague rules the United States had broken international law and violated the sovereignty of Nicaragua by aiding the contras. (The US had previously said it would not consider itself bound by the World Court’s decision.)

1988: Pope John Paul II, on a visit to Austria, gives a warm greeting to President Kurt Waldheim — under attack for alleged complicity in Nazi war crimes.

1989: More people put on trial in China for taking part in rioting during suppression of nation’s democracy movement.

1990: Contra commanders surrender their weapons to Nicaraguan President Violetta Barrios de Chamorro in ceremony marking the end of the country’s civil war.

1991: Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black jurist to sit on the nation’s highest court, announces his retirement. (His departure leads to the contentious nomination of Clarence Thomas to succeed him.)

1992: Crown Prince Alexander, heir to the Yugoslav throne, receives an emotional welcome upon his return, hopeful of re-establishing the monarchy.

1994: Freezing temperatures cover large areas of Brazil’s coffee-growing regions causing losses of nearly a quarter of the following year’s crop.

1995: The Atlantis space shuttle blasts into orbit with a US-Russian crew of seven, on the first shuttle-docking mission with Russia’s space station Mir.

1996: US President Bill Clinton and other world leaders, at their annual G-7 summit in Lyon, France, pledge to combat international terrorism in the aftermath of a truck bomb that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia.

1997: Tajikistan’s president and a rebel leader sign a peace pact ending five years of bitter civil war in the Central Asian nation, but fighting lingers.

1998: An earthquake rattles Adana in southern Turkey, killing 144 people and injuring about 1,000.

2000: The United Nations releases a report that reveals AIDS has killed 19 million people worldwide. The report predicts the disease will wipe out half the teenagers in some African nations, devastating economies and societies.

2001: The World Court, formally known as the International Court of Justice, rules 14-1 that the United States had violated an international treaty by not halting the execution by the state of Arizona of two German brothers in 1999.

2004: The premier under ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is detained on suspicion of orchestrating killings during the February rebellion, officials report.

2005: Kenya’s final attempt to prosecute suspects in the deadly 2003 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombasa — an attack claimed by al-Qaeda — ends with acquittals.

2006: Inmates riot at a prison in central Venezuela, leaving seven prisoners dead and 11 wounded. A constitutional amendment to ban desecration of the American flag dies in a Senate cliffhanger, falling one vote short of the 67 needed to send it to states for ratification. *“Railroad Killer” Angel Maturino Resendiz, linked to 15 murders, is executed in Texas for the slaying of physician Claudia Benton in 1998.

2007: British Prime Minister Tony Blair resigns after a decade in power in which he transformed the Labour Party and helped end Northern Ireland’s troubles, but angered many of his supporters by committing Britain to a bloody, unpopular war in Iraq.

2008: North Korea destroys the most visible symbol of its nuclear weapons programme, blasting the cooling tower at its main atomic reactor into a cloud of smoke as a sign of its commitment to stop making plutonium for atomic bombs.

2009: North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia agree to resume military ties in their first high-level meeting since Russia’s war with Georgia disrupted their relations 10 months before.

2010: The head of the Central Intelligence Agency says the US has driven al-Qaeda into hiding and undermined its leadership but is struggling to oust its primary sympathiser, the Taliban, from Afghanistan.

2011: Thousands of jubilant Libyans celebrate in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi after the International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Moammar Gadhafi, accusing him of crimes against humanity for killing civilians who rose up against his rule. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is convicted by a federal jury in Chicago of a wide range of corruption charges, including the allegation that he had tried to sell or trade President Barack Obama’s US Senate seat. (Blagojevich was later sentenced to 14 years in prison.) Venus and Serena Williams are eliminated in the fourth round of Wimbledon, the first time in five years neither sister advance to the quarter-finals at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

2013: South Korean President Park Guen-hye arrives in China for four days of talks with President Xi Jinping aimed at reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

2015: The Episcopal Church elects its first African American presiding bishop, choosing Bishop Michael Curry of North Carolina during the denomination’s national assembly in Salt Lake City.

Today’s Birthdays

Alexis Bouvard, French astronomer (1767-1843); Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish Nationalist leader (1846-1891); Helen Keller, US blind and deaf scholar (1880-1968); Eduard Spranger, German educator/philosopher (1882-1963); Emma Goldman, Russian labour leader/anarchist (1869-1940); Frank O’Hara, US poet/critic (1926-1966); Byron Lee (Byron Lee and the Dragonaires), musician, record producer and entrepreneur (1935-2008 ); Ross Perot, business executive (1930-2019); Bruce Babbitt, former interior secretary (1938- ); Bruce Johnston (The Beach Boys), Singer-musician (1942- ); Viktor Petrenko, Olympic gold and bronze medal figure skater (1969- ); Vera Wang, fashion designer (1949- ); Jo Frost, TV personality from Supernanny UK (1970- ); Leigh Nash, singer-songwriter (1976- ); Khloe Kardashian, reality TV star (1984- ); Drake Bell, actor (1986- ); Lauren Jauregui (Fifth Harmony), pop singer (1996- ).

— AP and Jamaica Observer