Today is the 285th day of 2022 There are 80 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1960: Japanese politician Inejiro Asanuma is assassinated with a sword during a live televised debate by 17-year-old nationalist Otoya Yamaguchi.

OTHER EVENTS

1933: Bank robber John Dillinger escapes from a jail in Ohio with the help of his gang.

1934: Peter II becomes king of Yugoslavia following the assassination of his father, King Alexander.

1938: Japanese troops seize Canton, severing the railway to the temporary Chinese capital in Wuhan.

1942: US forces defeat the Japanese in the Battle of Cape Esperance on Guadalcanal in World War II. Attorney General Francis Biddle announces, during a Columbus Day celebration at Carnegie Hall in New York, that Italian nationals in the United States will no longer be considered enemy aliens.

1945: The Allied Control Council in Germany orders the dissolution of the Nazi Party after World War II.

1951: Under attack by French planes, the Viet Minh rebels suffer one of their worst defeats of Vietnam’s civil war with 1,200 dead and 5,000 captured, in an attempt to take Nghialo.

1956: The UK tells Israel the British will assist Jordan if Israel attacks that country.

1957: The Dr Seuss Yuletide tale How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is first published by Random House.

1960: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev upsets the decorum of the UN General Assembly by pounding the desk with his shoe during a dispute.

1964: US forces take control in South Vietnam, ousting the Government of Major General Nguyen Khanh. The Soviet Union launches a Voskhod space capsule with a three-man crew on the first mission involving more than one crew member (the flight lasts just over 24 hours).

1973: US President Richard Nixon nominates House of Representatives Minority Leader Gerald R Ford to succeed Spiro T Agnew as vice-president. Agnew resigned after the Justice Department revealed he had taken kickbacks.

1975: Pope Paul VI canonises an Irish archbishop, Oliver Plunkett, who was executed by the British in 1681.

1984: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escapes an attempt on her life when an Irish Republican Army bomb explodes at a hotel in Brighton, England, killing five people.

1987: George Harrison releases the single Got My Mind Set On You which becomes his third solo number-one hit and the last chart-topper by any of The Beatles.

1991: Pope John Paul II makes his second visit to Brazil in an effort to renew interest in the Roman Catholic Church due to its loss of many Brazilian adherents to Protestant groups and African mystical cults.

1992: A strong earthquake near Cairo kills 450 people and injures 4,000.

1993: German Chancellor Helmut Kohl pledges to move most of the nation’s Government to Berlin from Bonn, the current capital, by the end of the year 2000.

1997: Cuban President Fidel Castro appoints his brother Raul as successor. In Monterey Bay, California, at the age of 53 singer John Denver is killed in the crash of his privately built aircraft.

1998: Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic agrees to withdraw his forces from Kosovo, initiate peace negotiations with ethnic Albanians, and allow international observers to ensure UN demands are met.

1999: A military coup throws Pakistan into political disarray as conflict with India continues over the disputed Kashmir territory. Army chief General Pervez Musharraf becomes the new leader and promises to hold elections. The ‘Day of Six Billion’ is proclaimed when the six billionth living human in the world is born.

2000: Seventeen sailors are killed in a suicide bomb attack on the US destroyer Cole in Yemen.

2001: The United Nations and its Secretary General Kofi Annan win the Nobel Peace Prize.

2002: A bomb explodes in a resort area on the Indonesian island of Bali, destroying two nightclubs, killing more than 180 people, and wounding nearly 300 others.

2007: Former US Vice-President Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm over global warming.

2009: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows never to allow Israeli leaders or soldiers to stand trial on war crimes charges over their actions during a military offensive in the Gaza Strip, denouncing a UN report in a keynote address to Parliament.

2012: Thousands of supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi clash in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in the first such act of violence since Morsi took office more than three months earlier. The European Union wins the Nobel Peace Prize for fostering peace on a continent long ravaged by war.

2016: Wells Fargo announces that its embattled CEO, John Stumpf, is stepping down as the nation’s second-largest bank finds itself roiled by a scandal over its sales practices.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

England’s King Edward VI (1537-1553); Pedro I, first emperor of Brazil (1798-1834); James Ramsey MacDonald, British prime minister (1865-1937); Ralph Vaughan Williams, English composer (1872-1958); Edith Stein, German Roman Catholic saint (Saint Teresa Benedicta Of The Cross) (1891-1942); Frank “Freddie” Reginald Martin, former West Indian cricketer in the inaugural West Indies Test tour of England (1893-1967 ); Luciano Pavarotti, Italian tenor (1935-2007); Kirk Cameron, US actor (1970- ); Chris Wallace, broadcast journalist (1947- ); Hugh Jackman, actor (1968- ); Brian J Smith, actor (1981- ); Tyler Blackburn, actor (1986- ); Marcus T Paulk, actor (1986- ); Josh Hutcherson, actor (1992- )

— AP/ Jamaica Observer