Today is the 194th day of 2024. There are 172 days left in the year

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1960: France agrees to independence of Dahomey, Niger, Upper Volta, Ivory Coast, Chad, Central Africa and the Congo.

OTHER EVENTS

1856: American adventurer William Walker declares himself president of Nicaragua, a position he holds for about a year before being forced out by neighbouring states.

1902: Australia’s Parliament passes Immigration Restriction Act to stop non-European immigration, and gives women right to vote.

1941: British-Soviet mutual aid pact of World War II is signed.

1957: Prince Karim, 20-year-old student at Harvard University, becomes Aga Khan and leader of 20 million Ismaili Muslims following the death of his grandfather.

1971: Orangemen in Northern Ireland march in city streets to celebrate half century of Protestant rule.

1983: Britain and China begin formal year-long negotiations in Beijing on the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty.

1990: Boris Yeltsin resigns from the Soviet Union’s Communist Party during the 28th meeting of the Party Congress.

1991: The five permanent members of the UN Security Council tell Iraq’s ambassador his country must swiftly disclose the extent of its nuclear programme or face serious consequences.

1994: Germany’s highest court clears the way for German forces to take part in military operations beyond the country’s borders, reversing a post-World War II strategy intended to keep the country from becoming a threat.

1995: Bosnian Serbs separate men from women and children among the captured after the fall of Srebrenica and take over the UN base that was supposed to protect them.

1999: The 52-member Organization of African Unity begins a conference in Algeria to address African problems ranging from a US$ 220-billion debt to civil conflicts.

2000: The long-delayed International Space Station’s service module is lifted off into orbit.

2001: Bulgaria’s former king, Simeon II, is named prime minister.

2002: UN Security Council approves a resolution that grants US peacekeepers serving in UN missions immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court, for at least a year.

2003: Salamat Hashim, the leader of the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front, dies. The group had been fighting to establish a breakaway Islamic state in the southern Philippines.

2004: Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asks the Opposition Labour Party to join his coalition — an alliance that would strongly boost chances for an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

2005: Prince Albert II of Monaco accedes to the throne of a 700-year-old dynasty, a bachelor prince coming into his own as a retiring but modern ruler.

2007: French First Lady Cecilia Sarkozy visits five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in Libya for allegedly infecting hundreds of children with HIV. The diplomatic efforts of Cecilia and husband Nicolas Sarkozy eventually win their release.

2008: North Korea agrees to disable its main reactor by the end of October and allow international inspections to verify its nuclear disarmament.

2009: President Barack Obama gets a rapturous reception in Ghana from Africans overjoyed at the visit of America’s first black president to a country south of the Sahara.

2016: Bernie Sanders endorses fellow Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a speech in New Hampshire.

2021: At least 92 people die in a fire in a COVID-19 hospital ward in Iraqi city of Nasiriya.

2022: Netflix’s South Korean drama Squid Game becomes the first non-English series to be nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Drama.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Hipolito Yrigoyen, first democratically elected president of Argentina (1852-1933); Elijah Wedgewood, British pottery maker (1730-1795); Henry David Thoreau, US author-naturalist (1817-1862); George Eastman, US inventor (1854-1932); Amedeo Modigliani, Italian artist (1884-1920); Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet and Nobel laureate (1904-1973); Van Cliburn, US pianist (1934-2013); Bill Cosby, US actor-comedian (1937- ); Cheryl Ladd, US actress (1951- )

— AP