Today is the 241st day of 2022. There are 124 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2005: Hurricane Katrina plows into the below-sea level US city of New Orleans with 145-mph (233-kph) winds and rain that submerged neighbourhoods up to the rooflines as it moves into the state of Mississippi.

OTHER EVENTS

1526: Turks of the Ottoman Empire, led by Suleiman the Magnificent, defeat the Hungarian Empire at the Battle of Mohacs, ending the Hungarian monarchy and giving way to 150 years of Turkish occupation.

1533: Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro gives Atahuallpa, last Incan king, a choice of being burned at the stake or converting to Christianity. He converts and is strangled the same day.

1756: Frederick II of Prussia invades Saxony, marking start of Seven Years’ War.

1793: The French commissioner Leger-Felicite Sonthonax, facing a slave army and a British invasion, declares all slaves free in Haiti.

1825: Portugal recognises the Independence of Brazil.

1842: Great Britain and China sign Treaty of Nanking, ending the Opium War.

1862: The Bureau of Engraving and Printing began operations at the United States Treasury.

1864: The Democratic National Convention, which nominated Major General George B McClellan for president, opened in Chicago.

1877: The second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Brigham Young, died in Salt Lake City, Utah, at age 76.

1910: Korean Emperor Sunjong abdicated as the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty went into effect.

1935: Queen Astrid of Belgium is killed in car accident in Switzerland.

1943: Danish warships are scuttled at Copenhagen in World War II uprising against Nazis.

1944: 15,000 American troops of the 28th Infantry Division marched down the Champs Elysees (shahms ay-lee-ZAY’) in Paris as the French capital continued to celebrate its liberation from the Nazis.

1949: USSR performs its first nuclear test at Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR.

1952: Pyongyang, capital of North Korea, undergoes the heaviest air raid of the Korean war. US, South African, Australian, and South Korean air forces strike the city with about 600 tons of bombs, 4,000 gallons of firebombs,0 and 52,000 rounds of machine gun ammunition.

1957: US Senator Strom Thurmond from South Carolina, then a Democrat, ends a filibuster against a civil rights Bill by talking for more than 24 hours.

1962: Malvin R Goode began covering the United Nations for ABC-TV, becoming network television’s first black reporter.

1964: Roy Orbison’s single Oh, Pretty Woman was released on the Monument label.

1965: US astronauts L Gordon Cooper and Charles Conrad make safe landing after a record eight days of orbiting around Earth in Gemini 5.

1967: Final TV episode of The Fugitive starring David Janssen watched by 78 million people

1970: The Soviet Union delivers arms to Egypt to replace the heavy losses suffered during three months of intensive Israeli air strikes.

1972: North and South Korean Red Cross officials meet in North Korea openly for first time to discuss reuniting divided families. Swimmer Mark Spitz of the United States won the third of his seven gold medals at the Munich Olympics, finishing first in the 200-metre freestyle.

1980: A crowd of 400 Cuban refugees swarm onto a runway at Lima’s International Airport. Some 168 of them force their way onto a jet and demand to go to Miami. They surrender the next day.

1983: US Department of Veterans Affairs announces tests of 85,000 Vietnam vets reveal no adverse health effects related to Agent Orange exposure.

1991: Soviet lawmakers suspend Communist Party activities nationwide and freeze its bank accounts because of party’s role in failed coup attempt.

1996: A Russian plane carrying coal miners to work at a remote arctic island smashes into a mountain top, killing all 41 people aboard in the worst air disaster on Norwegian soil. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago nominates Al Gore for a second term as vice-president. Earlier in the day, President Bill Clinton’s chief political strategist, Dick Morris, resigned amid a scandal over his relationship with a prostitute.

1997: Hooded men kill more than 300 people in an Algerian farm village in the worst carnage since an Islamic insurgency began.

1998: A Cuban aeroplane bursts into flames and crashes during take-off from Quito, Ecuador, killing 79 people.

1999: East Timorese vote in a historic referendum on independence from Indonesia.

2003: A large car bomb explodes outside the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, Iraq. The explosion killed at least 80 people, including Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir al-Hakim, a top Shiite Muslim cleric.

2004: Chechens battered by five years of war and misery vote for a regional president in an election that the Kremlin portrays as a step towards stability and critics denounce as a fraud. Violence shadows the balloting when a man blows himself up near a polling station.

2006: A ceasefire aimed at ending Uganda’s brutal war — between its Government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army that has terrorised the east African nation for nearly two decades — goes into effect.

2008: Georgia says it will sever diplomatic ties with Moscow to protest the presence of Russian troops on its territory.

2009: Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai widens his lead over his main challenger in election returns, creeping toward the 50 per cent mark that would enable him to avoid a run-off in the divisive presidential contest.

2010: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warns that he will not back down from his threat to pull out of new peace talks with Israel if it resumes construction in West Bank settlements.

2011: Moammar Gadhafi’s wife and three of his children flee Libya to neighbouring Algeria, firm evidence that the long-time leader has lost his grip on the country.

2012: In a striking admission, Syrian President Bashar Assad says that his armed forces will need time to defeat the rebels — an acknowledgement that a stalemate has developed that could prolong the civil war.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, French painter (1780-1867); John Locke, English philosopher (1632-1704); Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian author (1862-1949); Ingrid Bergman, Swedish actress (1917-1982); Charlie Parker, US jazz musician (1920-1955); Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslav president and war crimes suspect (1941-2006); Michael Jackson, American pop star (1958-2009); Richard Attenborough, British actor, director (1923- ); Rebecca De Mornay, US actress (1962- )

— AP