Today is the 193rd day of 2024. There are 173 days left in the year.

TODAY HIGHLIGHTS

2010: Spain defeats Netherlands 1-0 in extra time to win World Cup.

OTHER EVENTS

1533: Pope Clement VII excommunicates England’s King Henry VIII after his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon is annulled so he can wed Anne Boleyn.

1572: Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, lands in the Netherlands with a band of 1,500 English volunteers to fight the Spanish.

1614: Swedish army under Jacob De La Gardie defeats Russian forces at Bronnitsy. Sweden gains a continuous territorial base extending from Finland to Estonia, which protects the Finnish frontier and blocks Russia from access to the Baltic Sea.

1810: Napoleonic Empire annexes Holland.

1956: Finno-Karelian Republic is abolished through incorporation into Soviet Union as Karelian Autonomous Republic.

1960: Premier Moise Tshombe of Katanga, now part of Congo, proclaims independence of that province. American author Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is published and became a classic, noted for its sensitive treatment of a child’s awakening to racism and prejudice in the South.

1963: South African police raid the secret headquarters of the African National Congress in a farmhouse north of Johannesburg. Walter Sisulu and other leaders are arrested; Army in Ecuador ousts President Carlos Julio Arosemena, accusing him of being a communist sympathiser.

1967: Communist-led mobs of Chinese in Hong Kong step up violent activities, and British authorities halt all public transport as a safety measure.

1971: Moroccan Government says leaders of a coup against King Hassan have been slain or arrested.

1978: Truck carrying industrial gas explodes and sets fire to campsite on Mediterranean coast in Spain, killing at least 180 people.

1987: United Nations proclaims newborn boy Matej Gaspar in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in what is now Croatia, the world’s five billionth inhabitant.

1989: British actor Laurence Olivier, arguably the greatest English-speaking actor of the 20th century, dies near London.

1991: Jetliner carrying Nigerian pilgrims crashes in flames in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, killing all 261 people on-board.

1992: Former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in US prison for money laundering and drug trafficking.

1993: Military rulers and Opposition leaders agree to hold presidential elections in Togo, the first step to resolving a power struggle that claimed hundreds of lives in the West African country.

1994: Seven East European technicians are shot dead in two attacks in Algeria, the victims of a campaign by Islamist extremists to cripple the economy and topple the Government.

1998: Brushing aside international calls for a ceasefire, Serb forces pound Albanian rebels outside Pec in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, sending hundreds of civilians fleeing through the mountains.

1999: A heatwave and a violent storm converge on Central and Eastern Europe, killing more than a dozen people and blocking rails and roads. Hail causes extensive damage and kills hundreds of farm animals.

2000: A damaged gasoline pipeline explodes in southern Nigeria, killing 200 people and injuring dozens of others.

2001: Weeping Bosnian Muslim widows who lost their husbands and sons in one of the worst massacres in modern history lash out at Slobodan Milosevic and fugitive leaders of the Bosnian Serbs on the sixth anniversary of the slaughter in Srebrenica.

2002: South Korean President Kim Dae-jung appoints the country’s first female prime minister, Chang Sang.

2003: The Central Intelligence Agency accepts responsibility for the false claim regarding Iraq obtaining uranium from Niger in US President George W Bush’s January State of the Union address.

2004: Italian Coast Guard motorboats block a German aid ship from docking in Sicily after it sails southern Mediterranean waters for three weeks in search of a haven for its passengers, including 36 Sudanese seeking asylum.

2005: Two gun attacks in Belfast leave one man dead and another critically wounded on the eve of Northern Ireland’s tensest day of the year — the divisive “Twelfth” holiday of mass Protestant marches.

2006: Eight bombs hit Bombay’s commuter rail network during rush hour in the financial hub of India, killing at least 200 people and wounding hundreds more.

2007: Pakistani troops complete an eight-day siege and storming of Islamabad’s radical Red Mosque. Some 102 people die, including 10 elite troops and at least 73 suspected pro-Taliban militants. American first lady (1963–69) and environmentalist Lady Bird Johnson — the wife of Lyndon B Johnson, 36th president of the United States — dies in Texas.

2008: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fuad Saniora forms a national unity Cabinet in which Hezbollah and its allies have veto power over Government decisions.

2009: The deaths of eight British soldiers in Afghanistan within 24 hours triggers a debate in Britain that could undercut public support for the war, just as the US is ramping up its own participation in the conflict.

2011: An ageing cruise ship is severely overcrowded, has a malfunctioning engine and list to one side before it sinks in heavy wind and rain on a river east of Moscow, killing as many as 129 people.

2012: Decades after the US gave Laos a horrific distinction as the world’s most heavily bombed country per person, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledges to help get rid of millions of unexploded bombs that still pockmark the impoverished country and still kill.

2013: Hundreds of Shiites have been quietly expelled from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf Arab states on suspicion of being supporters of the militant group Hezbollah.

2014: Former Jamaican Governor General Sir Howard Cooke dies. He served as the country’s fourth governor general from August 1, 1991 to February 15, 2006.

2015: Mexican criminal Joaquín Guzmán, who was head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, escapes from prison, using a lengthy underground tunnel; a massive manhunt followed, and he was captured again some six months later.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Robert I the Bruce, Scottish king (1274-1329); Thomas Bowdler, English editor of Shakespeare works (1754-1825); Peter I Karageorgevic, first king of Yugoslavia (1844-1921); Gough Whitlam, Australian prime minister (1916-2014); Yul Brynner, Russian-born actor (1920-1985); Nicolai Gedda, Swedish operatic tenor (1925-2017); Richie Sambora, guitarist w/ rock group Bon Jovi (1959- ); Lil’ Kim, US rapper (1974- ); John Holt, reggae singer and songwriter (1947-2014)

— AP/Jamaica Observer

US rapper Lil’ Kim is 50 years old today.