Today is the 208th day of 2022. There are 157 days left in the year

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS

1998: White House intern Monica Lewinsky ends six months of silence to talk with prosecutors investigating her relations with US President Bill Clinton.

OTHER EVENTS

1377: First example of quarantine in Rugusa (now Dubroknik); city council passes law saying newcomers from plague areas must isolate for 30 days (later 40 days).

1586: Walter Raleigh brings the first tobacco to England from Virginia.

1784: Courier De L’Amerique becomes the first French newspaper to be published in the United States.

1789: US Congress establishes the Department of Foreign Affairs, forerunner of the Department of State.

1794: Revolutionary leader Maximilien de Robespierre is arrested by his opponents in Paris and tries to commit suicide, but fails.

1795: Spain signs peace treaty with France, ceding its part of Santo Domingo.

1811: Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Spanish Catholic priest and leader Mexican independence, is defrocked and excommunicated by the church.

1830: July Revolution starts in Paris in reaction to restrictive policies of Charles X, who is forced from the throne after three days of fighting.

1839: Opium War between China and Britain begins after Chinese authorities seize and burn British cargoes of opium.

1866: The first successful transatlantic telegraph cable between England and the United States is completed.

1909: Orville Wright tests the US Army’s first aeroplane for one hour, 12 minutes.

1921: Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin at the University of Toronto

1940: Billboard magazine begins publishing its best-seller charts of albums and singles; Bugs Bunny makes his film debut in the United States in the Warner Brothers release called A Wild Hare.

1941: At the age of 19 American singer and actress Judy Garland weds British-American musician David Rose ; they divorce in 1944.

1946: Avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein, whose Paris home was a salon for leading artists and writers, dies at age 72.

1953: An armistice is signed at Panmunjom after three years of negotiations. This agreement, in practice, ends the Korean War.

1954: Britain and Egypt agree on terms to end 72 years of British control of the Suez Canal.

1965: US planes carry out first attacks against anti-aircraft missile sites in north Vietnam.

1974: The House Judiciary Committee votes 27-11 to recommend US President Richard Nixon’s impeachment on an obstruction of justice charge in the Watergate case.

1976: Former Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is arrested and later convicted for accepting bribes from US Lockheed Corporation.

1977: John Lennon is granted a green card for permanent residence in US.

1980: The deposed shah of Iran dies at a military hospital outside Cairo, Egypt, at age 60.

1982: Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s musical Little Shop of Horrors opens off-Broadway at Orpheum Theatre in New York City.

1990: Zsa Zsa Gabor begins a three-day jail sentence for slapping a police officer in Beverly Hills.

1993: The Bosnian factions meet in Geneva for their first direct talks on a Serbo-Croat plan for a confederation of three ethnic mini states. NBC TV is awarded the 1996 Olympics coverage for US$456 million.

1996: A pipe bomb explodes during the Olympic Games in Atlanta, when the United States is hosting, killing one and injuring more than 100 people.

1999: The United Nations and the Red Cross cancel aid flights into Afghanistan after rockets fired by a Taliban-opposed alliance hit the Kabul airport. Tony Hawk is the first skateboarder to land a “900”.

2000: In Fiji a new Cabinet is sworn in with hopes of restoring calm to the island nation wracked by unrest from a May 19 coup.

2001: Scientist Joseph Miller claims that data collected by NASA’s Viking lander 25 years before on the surface of Mars show evidence of life; other scientists doubt his claim.

2003: American cyclist Lance Armstrong wins the 100th Tour de France — the most prestigious race in cycling — for the fifth year in a row, tying him for the most consecutive wins. British-born American entertainer and comic actor Bob Hope, who was known for his rapid-fire delivery of jokes and one-liners, dies at age 100.

2004: Iran once again builds centrifuges that can be used to make nuclear weaponry, breaking the UN nuclear watchdog agency’s seals on the equipment in a show of defiance against international efforts to monitor its programme, diplomats say.

2005: India’s financial capital is shut down by the strongest rains ever recorded in Indian history, with an intense deluge of 37 inches (94 centimetres) in one day.

2006: Former Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune is released from jail more than two years after his arrest on charges of orchestrating the killing of political opponents at the start of a rebellion that engulfed the country.

2007: Bhutan’s prime minister and six members of his Cabinet resign to pave the way for the first parliamentary elections in the Buddhist kingdom and its transition to democracy. Two news helicopters from Phoenix, Arizona, television stations KNXV and KTVK collide over Steele Indian School Park in central Phoenix while covering a police chase; there are no survivors and it is regarded as the worst civil aviation incident in Phoenix history.

2008: Iran hangs 29 people after they were convicted of murder, drug trafficking and other crimes.

2009: Israel hardens its insistence that it will do anything it feels necessary to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, just the ultimatum the United States hoped not to hear as it tries to nudge Iran to the bargaining table.

2010: A US audit finds that the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 per cent of US$9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.

2012: Britain opens its Olympics in a celebration of old England and new, featuring a stunt double for Queen Elizabeth II parachuting with James Bond into Olympics Stadium.

2017: American playwright and actor Sam Shepard — whose plays adroitly blend images of the American West, pop motifs, science fiction, and other elements of popular and youth culture — dies at age 73.

2018: CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves is accused of sexual misconduct in The New Yorker by journalist Ronan Farrow. American singer-songwriter Neil Diamond gives a small thank-you concert to firefighters near his home in Colorado.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Kukai, Japanese Buddhist saint (774-835); Ludovico Sforza, Italian Renaissance prince (1452-1508); Enrique Granados, Spanish composer (1867-1916); Ernst Dohnanyi, Hungarian composer (1877-1960); Geoffrey De Havilland, English aircraft designer (1882-1965); Leo Durocher, US baseball manager (1906-1991); Norman Lear, US TV producer (1922-); Jerry Van Dyke, US actor (1931-2018 ); Bobbie Gentry, country singer (1944- ); Pete Yorn, rock singer/songwriter (1974- ); Jonathan Rhys Meyers, British actor (1977- ).

— AP