Today is the 277th day of 2022. There are 88 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1958: The first trans-Atlantic passenger jetliner service begins by the British Overseas Airways Corp, with flights between London and New York.

OTHER EVENTS

1537: The 1st complete English-language Bible, the Matthew Bible is printed, with translations by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale.

1582: The last Julian calendar day in Spain, Portugal and pontifical states is observed. To sync to the Gregorian calendar, 10 days are skipped and the next date is October 15.

1830: The provisional Government of Belgium proclaims the country’s independence from the Netherlands.

1853: Turkey declares war on Russia, which occupied modern Romania three months earlier. Later, Britain, France and Sardinia join the Crimean War on Turkey’s side.

1865: Napoleon III of France agrees to Prussian supremacy in Germany and to a united Italy after meeting Otto von Bismarck in Biarritz.

1895: The first US Open golf tournament is held at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island. Englishman Horace Rawlins wins the inaugural event by beating Willie Dunn of Scotland by two strokes.

1900: In a final confrontation, around 4,000 Ashantis are defeated by the British in the Gold Coast (Ghana)

1910: Portugal’s King Manuel II flees to England on the outbreak of a revolution in Lisbon. A republic is declared the next day.

1927: Gutzon Borglum begins sculpting Mt Rushmore and continues work on it until 1941.

1930: Former presidential candidate Getulio Vargas leads a revolt in Brazil and later becomes president.

1945: The head of the wartime Vichy Government in France, Pierre Laval is put on trial in Paris as a traitor and a Nazi supporter. He is later executed.

1950: The UN consents to a US-backed invasion of North Korea.

1957: The Soviet Union puts the first spacecraft, Sputnik, into orbit around earth, heralding the start of the space age.

1966: The British colony of Basutoland becomes independent as the Kingdom of Lesotho.

1971: The US calls on Egypt and Israel to work out an interim agreement on the reopening the Suez Canal, as the first step toward resolving the Middle East crisis.

1974:John Lennon releases his Walls & Bridges album featuring the number one single Whatever Gets You thru the Night.

1980: Jordan becomes the first Arab State to openly support Iraq in its war with Iran, sending food and supplies.

1986: Fire breaks out in a Soviet nuclear-powered submarine carrying ballistic missiles. Three people are reported dead.

1987: The Last Emperor, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring John Lone, Joan Chen and Peter O’Toole, premieres at the Tokyo Film Festival. It wins Best Picture in 1988.

1988: Brazil enacts a new constitution, completing a long-awaited “transition to democracy”.

1990: German lawmakers meet in the Reichstag for the first meeting of reunified Germany’s Parliament.

1992: Government and Mozambique National Resistance rebels sign a peace treaty to end 15 years of civil war.

1993: Two US Black Hawk helicopters headed to capture a local warlord are shot down in the Somali capital of Mogadishu; gun battles continue into the night while rescue attempts are made in hostile territory, leaving 18 US troops dead and 90 wounded. Troops and tanks of President Boris Yeltsin shell and occupy the Russian White House in Moscow, the house of government of the Russian Federation.

1994: At least 60 people are reported dead in a month as parts of India are hit by a pneumonic plague.

1995: Israel announces that it will release 1,200 Palestinian prisoners over the next few days, signalling its intention to swiftly honour a key commitment under the new accord with the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

1996: Armed Taliban fighters haul men off the streets and force them into mosques to hear fiery sermons during the first Muslim holiday in Kabul, Afghanistan, since the new Islamic rulers took over.

1999: A Croatian court convicts Dinko Sakic, a commander of a World War II death camp in Nazi-controlled Croatia, to 20 years in prison on war crime charges.

2000: Congo President Laurent Kabila orders a US$20-million, 267-carat diamond returned to local businessman Alphonse Ngoyi Kasanji, who was imprisoned while authorities investigated if it was stolen from a State mining company.

2001: A Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile brings down a Russian airliner over the Black Sea, killing all 78 people on-board.

2002: John Walker Lindh, a US citizen captured by US forces while he was fighting with Afghanistan’s now-deposed Taliban militia, is sentenced to 20 years in prison.

2005: The UN Security Council urges Rwandan forces in Congo to disarm and return home without delay, four days after a deadline expires for them to leave or face eviction by force; the estimated 12,000 to 15,000 fighters are mostly extremist Rwandan militiamen blamed for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

2006: WikiLeaks is launched, created by Internet activist Julian Assange.

2007: North Korea pledges to detail its nuclear programmes and disable all activities at its main reactor complex by year end, after which they sign a wide-ranging reconciliation pact with South Korea.

2008: Poland turns over control of an area south of Baghdad to American troops, making it the latest in a string of countries to leave the dwindling, US-led coalition.

2009: Hundreds of insurgents storm a pair of remote outposts near the Pakistan border, killing eight US soldiers and capturing more than 20 Afghan security troops in the deadliest assault against US forces in more than a year.

*2010: The Nobel Prize in medicine goes to a man whose work led to the first test tube baby, an achievement that helped bring 4 million infants into the world and raised challenging new questions about human reproduction.

2011: After Italian prisoners gave her a boisterous send-off, Amanda Knox makes her way home to America, holing up with family on the upper deck of a jetliner to Seattle as she enjoys her first full day of freedom since her murder conviction was reversed.

2012: A team of FBI agents arrives in Benghazi, Libya, to investigate the assault against the US Consulate but leaves after 12 hours on the ground as the hunt for those possibly connected to the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans narrows to one or two people in an extremist group.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Francois Guizot, French politician-historian (1787-1874); Buster Keaton, US comedian (1895-1966); Charlton Heston, US actor (1923-2008); Jackie Collins, US author (1937-2015); Anne Rice, American author (1941-2021); Susan Sarandon, US actress (1946- ); Jon Secada, singer (1961- )

– AP