Today is the 286th day of 2022. There are 79 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2006: Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded win the Nobel Peace Prize for their pioneering use of tiny loans — microcredit — to lift millions out of poverty.

OTHER EVENTS

1775: The US Navy is founded as the Continental Congress orders the construction of a naval fleet.

1792: The cornerstone of the Executive Mansion, later known as the White House, is laid during a ceremony in Washington, DC.

1815: The British occupy the South Atlantic island of Ascension to prevent Napoleon’s escape from St Helena, the closest island.

1880: Transvaal declares independence from Britain.

1889: The Boers rebel against the British in South Africa.

1903: The Boston Americans (later Boston Red Sox) defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates to win the first modern World Series.

1923: Ankara, formerly Angora, becomes the new capital of Turkey.

1937: Germany guarantees the inviolability of Belgium.

1943: Italy, during World War II, declares war on Germany — its former Axis partner.

1946: After being approved by French voters in a referendum, the constitution of the Fourth Republic is adopted in France.

1950: The film classic All About Eve, starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter, premieres in both Paris and New York City; known for its acid wit it won six Academy Awards, including best picture.

1952: Egypt reaches an agreement with Sudan on waters of the Nile.

1957: The East German Government seals its borders and recalls all East-mark holdings for conversion into a new currency.

1960: Richard M Nixon and John F Kennedy participate in the third televised debate of their presidential campaign, with Nixon in Hollywood, California, and Kennedy in New York.

1968: A new military Government in Panama names a civilian Cabinet.

1969: The Soviet Union sends its third spacecraft into orbit in as many days, putting seven cosmonauts in space.

1981: Voters in Egypt participate in a referendum to elect Vice-President Hosni Mubarak as the new president, one week after the assassination of Anwar Sadat.

1987: Costa Rica’s President Oscar Arias Sanchez wins the Nobel Peace Prize for sponsoring a plan to end civil wars in Central America.

1988: Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz becomes the first Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The archbishop of Turin, Italy, announces that carbon-14 dating indicates that the Shroud of Turin dates only to the Middle Ages, though the origins of the shroud remain controversial.

1990: General Michel Aoun, the Christian army commander who defied the Syrian-backed Lebanese Government for more than two years, surrenders power in the face of a Syrian-led military attack during the civil war.

1991: Twenty-one blacks are killed in a series of attacks in South Africa’s black townships.

1993: A fanatic fan of tennis star Steffi Graf is convicted in the stabbing of rival Monica Seles and receives a two-year suspended sentence.

1994: In the largest deal between software firms, Intuit Inc accepts a US$1.5-billion takeover offer from Microsoft Corporation.

1996: In response to strikes at its Canadian plants, General Motors Corporation lays off more than 1,300 workers at its Cadillac assembly plant outside Detroit.

1997: Queen Elizabeth II begins a visit to India to mark the 50th anniversary of the subcontinent’s independence from Britain.

1999: French lawmakers adopt a law giving unwed gay and straight couples the same rights previously limited to the married. Similar legislation already exists in several European countries.

2001: President Hosni Mubarak issues an order that 83 suspected Islamic militants stand trial in Egypt’s State security court.

2005: Islamic militants launch a major attack on police and government buildings in the provincial capital of Nalchik in Russia’s volatile Caucasus region, turning the city into a war zone wracked by gunfire and explosions. At least 49 people, including 25 militants, are killed.

2010: With remarkable speed — and flawless execution — miner after miner climbs into a cramped cage deep beneath the Chilean earth and are hoisted through 2,000 feet (600 metres) of rock to see precious sunlight, amid great fanfare, following the longest underground entrapment in history of 69 days after their mine collapsed in the Atacama Desert.

2011: Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund billionaire at the centre of the biggest insider trading case in US history, is sentenced to 11 years behind bars — the stiffest punishment ever handed out for the crime.

2012: Iran says it is ready to show flexibility at nuclear talks to ease Western concerns over its contentious nuclear programme, as tensions rise in the stand-off between the Islamic Republic, Israel and the West.

2014: Gay rights groups hail a “seismic shift” by the Catholic church toward gays after bishops say homosexuals have gifts to offer the church.

2016: Donald Trump heatedly rejects the growing list of sexual assault allegations against him as “pure fiction”, hammering his female accusers as “horrible, horrible liars”. Bob Dylan is named winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Yves Montand, Italian-born French singer-actor (1921-1991); Margaret Thatcher, British prime minister (1925-2013); Paul Simon, US singer (1941- ); Marie Osmond, US actress/singer (1959- ); Sacha Baron Cohen, British actor (1971- )

— AP