This is the 270th day of 2022. There are 95 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1951: The West German Bundestag pledges restitution to Jews for crimes perpetrated by the Nazis. No exact amount is decided, but West Germany is to repay about US$600 million in goods.

OTHER EVENTS

70: The walls of the upper city of Jerusalem are battered down by the Roman army.

1066: William the Conqueror’s troops set sail from Normandy for the conquest of England.

1290: An earthquake in the Gulf of Chihli (Bohai Sea), near China, reportedly kills 100,000 people.

1509: A storm ravages the Flemish/Dutch/Friese coast; thousands are killed.

1540: Pope Paul approves Ignatius of Loyola’s proposal to create the Society of Jesus, or Jesuit Order.

1590: Pope Urban VII dies 13 days after being chosen as the Pope, making his reign the shortest papacy in history.

1605: The armies of Sweden are utterly defeated by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Battle of Kircholm.

1694: A hurricane hits Carlisle Bay Barbados; 27 British ships sink and 3,000 die.

1779: American John Adams is named to negotiate the Revolutionary War’s peace terms with Britain.

1810: During the Battle of Bussaco, Arthur Wellesley’s Anglo-Portuguese Army defeats a larger French force led by Marshal André Masséna, with the French suffering 4,500 dead and wounded.

1821: Mexican revolutionary forces, led by Agustín de Iturbide, occupy Mexico City as the Spanish withdraw, bringing an end to the Mexican War of Independence.

1822: French scholar Jean-François Champollion announces he has deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone.

1825: George Stephenson’s “Locomotion No 1” becomes the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line, the Stockton and Darlington Railway in England.

1830: The Dutch army leaves Brussels, after hundreds are killed.

1905: The physics journal Annalen der Physik publishes Albert Einstein’s paper Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?, introducing the equation E=mc².

1908: Henry Ford’s first Ford Model T automobile leaves the Piquette Plant in Detroit, Michigan.

1912: W C Handy publishes Memphis Blues, considered the first blues song.

1923: Martial law is declared in Germany. New York Yankee Lou Gehrig hits the first of his 493 home runs.

1928: The United States agrees to recognise the Nationalist Chinese Government.

1939: Warsaw surrenders to the Germans after 19 days of resistance in World War II.

1940: Germany, Italy and Japan sign 10-year military and economic pacts, setting up the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis.

1945: The Congress Party and Muslim League win the most seats in elections for India’s Central Legislative Assembly.

1955: Egyptian Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser announces that Czechoslovakia has signed a barter agreement to exchange arms in return for Egyptian cotton.

1959: A typhoon batters the Japanese island of Honshu, killing almost 5,000 people.

1962: The army stages a coup in Yemen and Colonel Abdulla el-Sallah becomes premier.

1968: France bars Britain’s entry into the European Common Market.

1970: Jordan’s King Hussein and Al Fatah guerrilla leader Yasser Arafat meet in Cairo with 10 Arab chiefs of state and sign an agreement ending civil war in Jordan.

1990: Britain and Iran restore diplomatic relations; ties had been broken off in March 1989 after the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a death sentence against writer Salman Rushdie.

1993: The UN Security Council bans sales of arms and fuel to the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) because the rebel movement failed to stop fighting the Government and renegotiate a 1991 peace settlement to end the country’s civil war.

1994: American soldiers take over the Haitian Parliament as they continue to spread out over the country.

1995: The three rivals for control of Bosnia-Herzegovina — Bosnian Serbs, Croats and the Moslem-dominated Bosnian Government — reach an agreement to establish a collective presidency and Parliament in Bosnia.

1996: Islamist Taliban rebels seize control of Kabul and quickly hang former President Najibullah.

1997: Post-war television broadcasts begin in Bosnia-Herzegovina after an agreement between rival factions allows opposing sides to broadcast on alternating days.

1998: Gerhard Schroeder and his Social Democrats win German elections after 16 years of conservative rule under Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

1999: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak wins his fourth six-year term, taking nearly 94 per cent of the vote in a referendum on his presidency.

2000: A Greek ferry strikes rocks and sinks, killing 75 people. The ship’s captain and crew are detained by police when some survivors say they were watching a soccer match on television as the ship went aground.

2001: Macedonia’s top ethnic Albanian rebel leader, Ali Ahmeti, announces that his forces have disbanded after surrendering thousands of weapons to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

2004: The top prosecutor for Sierra Leone’s war crimes court accuses former Liberian President Charles Taylor of recruiting fighters in the country he once led and working to destabilise other West African nations.

2005: Afghanistan’s Interior Minister Ahmad Ali Jalali resigns after expressing frustration over the involvement of senior officials in the country’s booming drug trade.

2006: California Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger signs into law a sweeping global warming initiative that imposes the first cap on greenhouse gas emissions in the US.

2007: Soldiers fire into fleeing crowds on the bloodiest day in the month-long protest against Myanmar’s junta, and at least nine people are killed. Tens of thousands demonstrate for the 10th-straight day in Yangon and security forces also raid several monasteries overnight.

2008: Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang completes China’s first spacewalk.

2009: Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard says successfully test-firing short-range missiles in drills is meant to show Tehran is prepared to crush any military threat from another country.

2010: Pakistan disputes NATO’s claim that its forces have the right to hot pursuit across the Afghan border after coalition helicopters launch air strikes that kill more than 50 militants who had escaped into Pakistan following an attack on an Afghan security post.

2011: A convicted killer who escaped from a US prison in 1970 and hijacked an American airliner two years later, while dressed as a priest, is captured in Portugal after more than 40 years as a fugitive.

2019: A week of international climate change protests led by youth — notably Swedish activist Greta Thunberg — ends with millions having participated in the demonstrations.

2021: Netflix says Shonda Rhimes’ Bridgerton is its most-watched series ever, with Extraction, starring Chris Hemsworth, its number one film.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Cosimo de Medici, Italian founder of the Medici dynasty (1389-1464); King Louis XIII of France (1601-1643); Samuel Adams, US revolutionary leader (1722-1803); Louis Botha, first prime minister of South Africa (1862-1919); Arthur Penn, US film director (1922-2002); Dick Schaap, US sportscaster (1934-2001); Meat Loaf, US rock singer (1947- ); Gwyneth Paltrow, actress (1972- )

— AP