Today is the 234th day of 2022. There are 131 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1990: For hours scores of angry smokers block the street near Moscow’s Red Square in protest against a summer-long cigarette shortage in the Russian capital.

OTHER EVENTS

1485: Henry Tudor’s forces defeat English King Richard III during last battle in the Wars of the Roses. Richard is killed, the last English monarch to die in battle.

1567: Spanish Duke of Alba establishes “Council of Blood” and begins reign of terror as military governor in the Netherlands.

1642: English Civil War begins between Royalists and parliament when King Charles I brands parliament and its soldiers as traitors.

1654: Jacob Barsimson, said to be the first Jewish immigrant to America, lands at New Amsterdam.

1775: England’s King George III proclaims that the American colonies are in a state of open rebellion.

1784: Vincent Lunardi makes England’s first hot-air balloon flight, accompanied by a cat and dog.

1788: British found settlement in Sierra Leone, Africa, as asylum for freed slaves.

1799: Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte abandons the Egyptian campaign and slips past blockading British ships to return to France.

1851: The schooner America beats the Aurora off the English coast to win a trophy that would become known as the America’s Cup.

1911: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting is stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. It is recovered in Italy in 1913.

1932: BBC begins experimental regular TV broadcasts.

1945: Iranian army kills seven rebellious officers and men who were planning to lead an attack on the Russian-garrisoned city of Meshed. Vietnam conflict begins as Ho Chi Minh leads a successful coup.

1950: Jamaican George Rhoden sets a world record in the 400 metres with a time of 45.80 in Eskilstuna, Sweden.

1952: The United States announces it will pay South Korea another US$35-million installment to help defray the cost of maintaining US troops in Korea.

1958: US President Dwight Eisenhower offers to halt US nuclear tests for one year on condition that the Soviet Union refrains from further testing and agrees to open negotiations for an international nuclear test control system.

1963: Five exiled relatives of King Saud, including his half-brother Prince Talal, petition the Saudi Arabia embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, for permission to return to Saudi Arabia. They had been exiled in 1962 after forming a Saudi Liberation Front in Cairo in opposition to the king.

1968: Pope Paul VI arrives in Bogota, Colombia, for the start of his first papal visit to Latin America.

1972: Rhodesia is asked to withdraw from the 20th Summer Olympic Games because of its racial policies.

1978: Rebel Sandinistas occupy the National Palace in Managua, Nicaragua, holding more than 1,000 hostages for two days, in opposition to the Government of Anastasio Somoza Debayle.

1981: A Taiwanese domestic jetliner explodes in mid-air and bursts into flames, killing all 110 people on-board.

1991: Yugoslav federal official acknowledges that a truce ordered in Croatia on August 7 has collapsed and 70 people have died in fighting since then.

1993: Former Prime Minister Kasdi Merbah of Algeria, an advocate of dialogue with violent Islamic extremists, is assassinated in an ambush that also kills his son, brother and two others.

1996: Monsoon rains and a snowstorm sweep across the Himalayas during a Hindu pilgrimage to a mountain temple, killing more than 200. Tens of thousands are stranded.

1997: A cyclone in eastern India leaves 200 fishermen missing on the Bay of Bengal. Tidal waves six metres (20 feet) high destroy 2,500 homes.

1998: Angolan troops enter the war in Congo on the side of President Laurent Kabila, apparently saving the capital Kinshasa.

2000: Three UN aid workers are severely injured in an attack by pro-Indonesian militias in West Timor; the next day the United Nations high commissioner for refugees suspends operations in West Timor.

2002: About 45 kilogrammes (100 pounds) of weapons-grade uranium is transferred from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, to Russia, to be converted for use in commercial power generation. The uranium is considered a potential target for terrorist groups or rogue states seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

2003: The Nigerian Red Cross reports that 100 people have been killed and 1,000 others injured in five days of ethnic clashes in the southern port city of Warri.

2004: US journalist Micah Garen, who was kidnapped in Iraq more than a week prior, is released in the southern city of Nasiriyah.

2005: Saboteurs trigger multiple blackouts that halt Iraq’s entire oil export capacity, a move that costs Baghdad US$4.5 million per hour and removes 1.5 million barrels a day from the world market.

2006: A Russian passenger jet crashes in Ukraine during a thunderstorm, just minutes after sending a distress signal, killing all 170 people on-board, including dozens of children.

2007: Fourteen US soldiers are killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashes during a night-time mission in northern Iraq.

2008: Columns of Russian tanks roll out of key positions deep inside Georgia as a promised pullback begins.

2009: Britain rejects any suggestion it struck a deal with Libya to free the Lockerbie bomber — questions that arose when the leader of the North African nation, Moammar Gadhafi, publicly thanked British officials as he embraced the man convicted of killing 270 people in the 1988 airline bombing.

2010: All 33 Chilean miners trapped deep underground for 17 days are found alive. A probe sent some 2,257 feet (688 metres) deep into the collapsed mine early in the morning comes back with a handwritten note: “All 33 of us are fine in the shelter.”

2011: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is nowhere to be found as his 42-year rule teeters on the brink of collapse. Months of NATO air strikes have left his Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli largely demolished. Most of his security forces fled or surrendered when rebel forces rolled into the capital and took control of most of the city.

2012: Adherents of a religious sect in western Mexico physically block schoolteachers from entering their walled community, setting up one of the most high-profile confrontations between religious and civil authorities in Mexico since the 1940s.

2013: Egypt’s ousted leader Hosni Mubarak is released from prison and transported to a military hospital in a Cairo suburb where he is due to be held under house arrest.

2021: Josephine Baker becomes the first black woman to be interred in the Panthéon in Paris, according to the French Government.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Claude Debussy, French composer (1862-1918); Dorothy Parker, US writer/poet (1893-1967); Leni Riefenshtal, German film-maker (1902-2003); Deng Xiaoping, Chinese leader (1904-1997); Henri Cartier-Bresson, French photographer (1908-2004); Arthur Sackler, US physician (1913-1987); Karlheinz Stockhausen, German composer (1928-2007); Ray Bradbury, author (1920-2012); Bill Parcells, American football coach and executive (1941- ); Tori Amos, US singer (1963- ).

— AP / Jamaica Observer