TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1968: Civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

OTHER EVENTS

1581: England’s Queen Elizabeth I knights Francis Drake, the first English captain to circumnavigate the globe.

1611: Denmark’s King Christian IV declares war on Sweden.

1687: James II of England orders a pro-Catholic declaration read in church. Bishops refuse and the crisis culminates in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

1841: President William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia one month after his inauguration, becoming the first US president to die in office.

1844: Germany occupies south-west Africa, Togoland and Cameroons.

1902: The Rhodes Scholarship is established by Cecil Rhodes, empire builder and founder of Africa’s Rhodesia.

1942: Japanese naval forces sink three British warships in the Bay of Bengal during World War II.

1945: US forces liberate the Nazi death camp at Ohrdruf in Germany.

1949: North Atlantic Treaty is signed in Washington by foreign ministers of United States, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Canada for mutual assistance against aggression in the North Atlantic.

1959: Ivory Coast signs series of agreements with Niger, Upper Volta and Dahomey to form the Sahel-Benin Union.

1964: Archbishop Makarios abrogates 1960 treaty between Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, and heavy fighting erupts in north-west Cyprus.

1975: A US Air Force transport plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crashes shortly after take-off from Saigon, killing more than 130 people, most of them children.

1979: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the deposed prime minister of Pakistan, is hung after he is convicted of conspiring to murder a political opponent.

1986: Israel formally asks for access to United Nations War Crimes Commission file on former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

1988: Iran hammers Iraq’s vital oil centres with missiles and fighter-bombers.

1990: The National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, approves the Basic Law, the constitution that will govern Hong Kong after it reverts to Chinese sovereignty in 1997; Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev warns republic of Estonia to rescind independence declaration.

1992: More than 1,200 French troops, the first major contingent of a UN peacekeeping force, arrive in war-torn Croatia, as Bosnia mobilises its national guard to quell violence.

1993: Boris Yeltsin receives a $1.6-billion US aid package for Russia intended to help him fend off attacks from hard-liners before the April 25 referendum on his reforms.

1994: Serbs launch major attack on besieged Muslim enclave of Gorazde in Bosnia.

2000: West African intervention troops begin formally pulling out of Sierra Leone, amid fears the withdrawal may leave a security vacuum following the country’s brutal eight-year civil war.

2001: Sudan’s defence minister and 14 other military officers are killed when their plane crashes on take-off. The loss comes during a critical point in the country’s civil war.

2002: Israel continues its sweeping military offensive in the West Bank, despite US calls to withdraw from Palestinian areas.

2004: Slovenes overwhelmingly vote against restoring the rights of thousands of minorities who were stripped of their citizenship when Slovenia broke away from Yugoslavia. More than 18,000 mostly Bosnians, Croats and Serbs were officially erased from State records after Slovenia declared its independence in 1991, effectively losing their right to permanent residency.

2005: Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, who took refuge in Russia after protesters raided his offices, formally resigns from office — a move seen as a major step toward restoring stability in his troubled country.

2007: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces the release of 15 captive British sailors and marines who were seized 13 days earlier in the northern Persian Gulf by an Iranian force who claimed they were trespassing.

2008: Child welfare officials following up on an abuse complaint take custody of 18 girls who lived at a secretive West Texas religious retreat built by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs. A total of 52 girls, ages six months to 17 years, are bused away to be interviewed.

2010: Nine miners are pulled to safety after spending more than a week trapped in a flooded coal mine in northern China, and State television reports more survivors may be found.

2011: A diplomatic push by Moammar Gadhafi’s regime runs into trouble as opponents at home and abroad reject any solution to the Libyan conflict that would involve one of his sons taking power.

2012: The United States says that it will soon nominate an ambassador to Myanmar and ease some travel and financial restrictions on the formerly military-run south-east Asian nation following historic elections that saw opposition gains in parliament.

2013: The recently reopened Somali National Theatre turns into a scene of screams, chaos and blood when a suicide bomber attacks, killing 10 people, wounding dozens and shattering a tentative peace in the capital of Mogadishu.

2015: Somalia’s Islamic extremist group al-Shabab warns of more attacks in Kenya, like the assault on Garissa University College that killed nearly 150 people two days earlier.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Edith Soedergran, Finnish poet (1892-1923); Marguerite Duras, French writer (1914-1996); Maya Angelou, US poet (1928-2014); Anthony Perkins, US actor (1932-1992); Craig T Nelson, US actor (1944- ); Clive Davis, US music executive (1932- ); Robert Downey Jr, US actor (1965- )

— AP