Today is the 287th day of 2022. There are 78 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2003: John Allen Muhammad, one of two suspects in a series of October 2002 sniper shootings in the Washington, DC, area that killed 10 people and wounded three others, pleads not guilty to four murder charges.

OTHER EVENTS

1912: Theodore Roosevelt, campaigning for the US presidency, is shot in the chest in Milwaukee. The bullet hit a metal eyeglasses case and a thick paper copy of a speech he was to give, making the wound relatively shallow, and he went ahead with the scheduled speech.

1939: A German submarine sinks the British battleship Royal Oak in Scapa Flow, with loss of 833 lives.

1944: British and Greek troops liberate Athens from Germans; German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commits suicide rather than face execution for allegedly conspiring against Adolf Hitler.

1947: US Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than sound as he tests a rocket-powered research plane over California.

1960: The idea of a Peace Corps is first suggested by Democratic US presidential candidate John F Kennedy to an audience of students at University of Michigan.

1964: US civil rights leader Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1968: The first live telecast from a manned US spacecraft is transmitted from Apollo 7.

1986: Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Elie Wiesel wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1990: Israeli Government decides against cooperating with United Nations team investigating shooting deaths of 19 Palestinians at the Temple Mount.

1991: Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi wins Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve democracy in her homeland.

1992: A judge in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, convicts Andrei Chikatilo of the sex murders of 52 children and young women over a 12-year period. The horrific nature of the crimes makes Chikatilo one of the worst serial killers in history.

1993: Within hours of a United Nations police team pull-out of Haiti, gunmen assassinate Justice Minister Guy Malary, creating another setback to plans for ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s return.

1994: Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres share the Nobel Peace Prize with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

1995: Greece lifts its embargo on the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, which agrees to change its flag and declare that it has no claims on Greek territory.

1996: Truckloads of Taliban soldiers reinforce their battered defences north of Kabul, Afghanistan, after losing two strategic towns to former government soldiers.

1997: Dozens of protesters shouting “Clinton go home!” burn an effigy of US President Bill Clinton and throw manure on his limousine, marring an otherwise smooth visit to Brazil.

1998: Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate and a critic of the Nigerian Government, returns to his homeland for the first time in four years and is greeted by jubilant crowds.

1999: Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, the father of Tanzanian independence and a symbol of Africa’s hopes as it emerged from the shadow of colonial rule, dies at 77 of leukaemia.

2000: Alija Izetbegovic, who led the Bosnian Muslims through Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II, resigns from the Bosnian presidency, leaving power in a manner rare in the Balkans.

2002: Britain suspends the Northern Ireland Assembly, saying direct British rule was being introduced over the province because of “a loss of confidence on both sides of the community”. It was the fourth suspension since December 1999.

2006: The United Nations Security Council votes unanimously to impose punishing sanctions on North Korea for its claimed nuclear test, declaring that its action posed “a clear threat to international peace and security”.

2007: A landslide triggered by local residents digging for rumoured deposits of gold in an abandoned mine kills at least 21 people and injures 26 in southern Colombia.

2009: Iraq’s Government says at least 85,000 Iraqis were killed from 2004 to 2008, officially answering one of the biggest questions of the conflict — how many perished in the sectarian violence that nearly led to a civil war?

2012: Extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner lands gracefully on earth after a 24-mile (39-kilometre) jump from the stratosphere in a daring, dramatic feat that officials say made him the first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound.

2013: Gunmen in Syria release three Red Cross staffers and a Red Crescent volunteer who had been kidnapped in rebel-held territory.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Eamon de Valera, Irish statesman (1882-1975); Dwight D Eisenhower, US general and 34th US president (1890-1969); Mobuto Sese Seko, Zairian dictator (1930-1997); Cliff Richard, British singer (1940- ); Roger Moore, British actor (1927-2017)

— AP