This is the 235th day of 2022. There are 130 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1973: Four people are taken hostage by a robber in a Stockholm bank in Sweden. During the six-day drama the captor and captives develop a friendship later described as “the Stockholm syndrome”.

OTHER EVENTS

79 AD: Mount Vesuvius begins stirring on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire. It goes on to destroy Pompeii eventually.

1305: Scottish patriot William Wallace is hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason by Edward I of England at Smithfield, London.

1572: On the eve of the Feast of St Bartholomew 3,000 French Protestants are massacred in Paris on the orders of King Charles IX, precipitating a fifth religious civil war.

1838: The first American women’s college, Mount Holyoke, holds its first graduation.

1839: Hong Kong is taken by the British in war with China.

1850: First US National Women’s Rights Convention convenes in Worcester, Massachusetts.

1908: Abdul Aziz of Morocco is defeated at Marrakesh by Mulai Hafid, the new sultan.

1914: Japan declares war on Germany in World War I.

1924: Mars’ closest approach to Earth since 10th century is observed.

1926: Early pop icon and a sex symbol of the 1920s, actor and silent film idol Rudolph Valentino (full name Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguolla), popularly referred to as the Latin Lover or simply as Valentino, dies at age 31 from peritonitis.

1927: Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed for murder in Massachusetts, despite a mishandled trial and the widespread belief that they were innocent.

1933: The first televised boxing match — a six-round exhibition at Broadcasting House in London between middleweights Archie Sexton and Lauri Raiteri — is aired by BBC-TV.

1942: The Battle of Stalingrad takes place in which 600 Luftwaffe planes bomb Stalingrad and 40,000 die as a result. The last cavalry charge in history takes place at Isbushenskij, Russia, when the Italian Savoia Cavalleria charges the Soviet infantry during World War II.

1943: This marks the 50th day of the Battle of Kursk, USS, during which the largest tank battle in history ends with Russia’s defeat of Germany; over 10,000 tanks take part and nearly 250,000 combatants are killed.

1958: China provokes an international crisis by bombarding the island of Quemoy, held by Taiwan.

1962: US Telstar satellite relays the first live television programme between United States and Europe.

1969: Archaeologists unearth a 3,400-year-old city buried by volcanic ash beneath Thira, capital of Santorini island; two-storey buildings, Minoan painted vases, a medicine cabinet and storage jars are uncovered. The city is named Prehistoric Pompeii.

1982: Lebanon’s Parliament elects Christian militia leader Bashir Gemayel as president. He is assassinated three weeks later.

1986: Leaders of nine southern African nations, meeting in Angola, express support for international economic sanctions against South Africa.

1990: Soviet Republic of Armenia declares independence, and Estonia begins formal negotiations with Kremlin on separation from Soviet Union.

1991: Leftist rebels bomb Colombia’s main oil pipeline, forcing the country to suspend pumping of crude petroleum.

1993: UN peacekeepers reach trapped Muslims in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, for the first time in two months and find 55,000 people on the verge of starvation.

1994: A wave of refugees fleeing Cuba — on inner tubes, planks and plastic foam blocks — heads for the US naval base in Guantanamo.

1995: The first group of peacekeepers pull out of the United Nations “safe area” of Gorazde, a withdrawal criticised as leaving the Bosnian enclave vulnerable.

1996: Osama bin Laden issues a message titled ‘A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places’.

1997: Iran’s new moderate president, Mohammad Khatami, appoints a female vice-president, the first woman to serve in a top government post since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

2000: A Gulf Air Airbus A320 crashes into shallow Persian Gulf waters after circling and trying to land in Bahrain, killing all 143 people aboard. The first season of the US version of the reality TV game show Survivor ends with Richard Hatch being pronounced the winner; the hugely popular series is credited with launching the reality TV fad of the early 21st century.

2001: A Japanese court rules that the central government must pay a total of US$375,000 to 15 Koreans who survived an explosion aboard a Japanese ship shortly after World War II.

2002: Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe unexpectedly dissolves his cabinet and ousts moderates, a move officials say is related to his controversial programme to seize land from white farmers and redistribute it to landless blacks.

2003: John Geoghan, a former Roman Catholic priest whose January 2002 sexual abuse conviction sparked a widespread abuse scandal in the Catholic church, is beaten and strangled to death in prison.

2005: Hurricane Katrina forms over The Bahamas, later becoming a category 5 hurricane. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan tours the hunger-stricken desert nation of Niger as a French aid group accuses the world body of responding to the crisis too late and with too little.

2006: A British pilot breaks a land-speed record for driving with a diesel engine, racing across the Bonneville Salt Flats at more than 325 miles per hour (523 kilometres per hour).

2007: Pakistan’s Supreme Court rules that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif can return to Pakistan from exile.

2009: The outcry over alleged vote fraud in Afghanistan’s election escalates, with President Hamid Karzai’s chief opponent charging that turnout figures are padded.

2010: A 12-hour hostage drama in the heart of the Philippine capital of Manila ends with the deaths of eight Hong Kong tourists and the ex-policeman who seized their bus to demand the return of his job. Professional golfer Tiger Woods and Swedish former model Elin Nordegren divorce after sixs years of marriage.

2011: A pair of judges puts an end to the sensational sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, setting him free after prosecutors argued the hotel housekeeper accusing the French former head of the International Monetary Fund of sexual assault could not be trusted. After rebel forces capture his compound in Tripoli, Muammar al-Qaddafi’s four-decade rule of Libya ends. Although his whereabouts were initially unknown he was discovered two months later in the Libyan city of Surt and killed.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Francois Hotman, French political author (1524-1590); France’s King Louis XVI (1754-1793); Arnold Toynbee, British historian (1852-1883); Gene Kelly, US actor-dancer (1912-1996); Barbara Eden, US actress (1934-); Shelley Long, US actress (1949- ); Queen Noor, American-born widow of Jordan’s King Hussein (1951- ); River Phoenix, American actor (1970-1993); Kobe Bryant, LA Lakers professional basketball player for LA Lakers (1978-2020).

— AP