Today is the 277th day of 2023. There are 88 days left in the year

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

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

OTHER EVENTS

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.

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 on 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 of the Suez Canal as the first step toward resolving the Middle East crisis.

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

1988: Brazil enacts new constitution, completing 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 Blackhawk 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.

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 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

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.

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.

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

2012: A team of FBI agents arrives in Benghazi, Libya, to investigate the assault against the US consulate and 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), Susan Sarandon, US actress (1946- ), Jon Secada, singer (1961- )

– AP