Today is the 195th day of 2023. There are 170 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1789: Citizens of Paris storm and capture the Bastille prison and release prisoners, marking start of French Revolution. Now the French national day.

OTHER EVENTS

1536: France signs Treaty of Lyons with Portugal for attack on Spain.

1544: England’s King Henry VIII crosses to Calais to join Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in campaign against France’s King Francis I in Picardy.

1690: Seven French privateers capture New England islands of Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and Block Island.

1790: France’s King Louis XVI accepts the revolutionary constitution.

1881: William H Bonney, known as “Billy the Kid” and the reputed killer of 27 men, is shot dead at age 21 by Sheriff Pat Garrett in New Mexico.

1886: Britain and Germany agree on frontiers of Gold Coast and Togoland in Africa.

1900: International expedition, including United States and Japan, takes Tientsin, now Tianjin, in China.

1933: German political parties, other than Nazis, are suppressed, and a law is passed that provides for the sterilisation of two million people deemed unfit for reproduction.

1934: Oil pipeline between Mosul, Iraq, and Tripoli, Lebanon, is opened.

1958: The army of Iraq overthrows the monarchy. Iraq’s King Feisal and Premier Nuri-Es-Said are assassinated in Baghdad coup, and King Hussein assumes power as head of Arab Federation.

1960: The government in what is now Kinshasa, Congo, severs relations with Belgium.

1967: UN General Assembly adopts resolution asking Israel to halt action it was taking to alter city of Jerusalem after Six-Day War.

1971: Government troops in Jordan attempt to crush Palestinian guerrilla movement.

1988: Iran, at the United Nations, accuses the United States of committing a “barbaric crime” in shooting down Iranian commercial airliner.

1992: Navy helicopters and volunteers rescue 44 beached whales in Sydney, Australia.

1993: Somali militiamen fire on UN headquarters in a new wave of assaults hours after Somali militants distribute leaflets calling for revenge attacks on American soldiers.

1994: The UN Security Council urges the world to aid the estimated 250,000 Hutu refugees from Rwanda packed into Goma, Zaire.

1997: Regional legislators elect K R Narayanan as India’s first president from an “untouchable” caste.

2001: Leaders of India and Pakistan meet for the first time in two years after the nations came close to fighting a war in the disputed Kashmir province, but talks between the two nuclear-armed neighbours fail.

2002: A gunman with links to neo-Nazi groups fires one shot at French President Jacques Chirac as the president rides in an open jeep in the annual Bastille Day military parade in Paris.

2004: The much-awaited report from an official British inquiry into pre-war intelligence on Iraq criticises Prime Minister Tony Blair but finds no deliberate distortions.

2006: A suicide bomber in Karachi blows himself up outside the home of a prominent Shiite Muslim cleric, killing the cleric and a bodyguard and triggering a riot in the southern Pakistani city.

2007: The Los Angeles archdiocese reaches a $660-million settlement with more than 500 alleged victims of clergy sex abuse.

2008: The United States criticises Russia for intentionally violating Georgian airspace by sending military aircraft over the rebellious Georgian region of South Ossetia.

2009: Iran hangs 13 members of a Sunni Muslim rebel group convicted of bombings and killings in the country’s restive south-east near the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

2010: An Iranian nuclear scientist who disappeared a year ago heads back to Tehran, telling Iranian State media that he was abducted by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents who tried to bribe him into speaking out against his homeland. The US says he was a willing defector who changed his mind.

2011: Plans for a whaling sanctuary in the southern Atlantic are put off by a year after Japan and other pro-whaling nations stall talks on the proposal at the International Whaling Commission.

2013: Mexican marines capture Miguel Trevino Morales, considered the country’s most vicious and violent drug lord, who led the Los Zetas criminal gang.

2014: Egypt presents a ceasefire plan to end a week of heavy fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Cardinal Jules Mazarin, French statesman (1602-1661); James McNeill Whistler, US artist (1834-1903); Gustav Klimt, Austrian painter (1862-1918); Ante Pavelic, Croatian fascist leader (1889-1959); Isaac Bashevis Singer, Polish-born US author and Nobel laureate (1904-1991); Woody Guthrie, U singer and songwriter (1912-1967); Gerald Ford, US president (1913-2006); Ingmar Bergman, Swedish film director (1918-2007); Victoria, crown princess of Sweden (1977- ); Polly Bergen, US actress/singer (1930-2014); Roosevelt “Rosy” Grier, former US football player/actor (1932- )

– AP