Today is the 208th day of 2026. There are 157 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS

2003: American cyclist Lance Armstrong wins the 100th Tour de France for the fifth year in a row, tying him for the most consecutive wins.

OTHER EVENTS

1377: The city council in Rugusa (now Dubroknik) passes a law saying newcomers from plague areas must isolate for 30 days (later 40 days).

1586: Walter Raleigh brings the first tobacco to England from Virginia.

1789: The US Congress establishes the Department of Foreign Affairs, forerunner of the Department of State.

1839: The Opium War between China and Britain begins after Chinese authorities seize and burn British cargoes of opium.

1919: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 ignite after a young, black man is stoned and drowned in Lake Michigan for swimming in an area reserved for whites.

1921: Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolate insulin at the University of Toronto.

1940: Billboard magazine begins publishing its best-seller charts of albums and singles; Bugs Bunny makes his film debut in the United States in the Warner Brothers release called A Wild Hare.

1954: Britain and Egypt agree on terms to end 72 years of British control of the Suez Canal.

1974: The House Judiciary Committee votes, 27-11, to recommend US President Richard Nixon’s impeachment on an obstruction of justice charge in the Watergate case.

1976: Former Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is arrested and later convicted for accepting bribes from US Lockheed Corporation.

1993: NBC TV is awarded the 1996 Olympics coverage for US$456 million.

1998: White House intern Monica Lewinsky ends six months of silence to talk with prosecutors investigating her relations with US President Bill Clinton.

2001: Scientist Joseph Miller claims data collected by NASA’s Viking lander 25 years before on the surface of Mars show evidence of life; other scientists doubt his claim.

2003: British-born American entertainer and comic actor Bob Hope, who was known for his rapid-fire delivery of jokes and one-liners, dies at age 100.

2004: Iran once again builds centrifuges that can be used to make nuclear weaponry, breaking the UN nuclear watchdog agency’s seals on the equipment in a show of defiance against international efforts to monitor its programme, diplomats say.

2005: India’s financial capital is shut down by the strongest rains ever recorded in Indian history — an intense deluge of 37 inches (94 centimetres) in one day.

2007: Bhutan’s prime minister and six members of his Cabinet resign to pave the way for the first parliamentary elections in the Buddhist kingdom and its transition to democracy. Two news helicopters from Phoenix, Arizona, television stations KNXV and KTVK collide over Steele Indian School Park in central Phoenix while covering a police chase; there are no survivors.

2008: Iran hangs 29 people after they were convicted of murder, drug trafficking and other crimes.

2009: Israel hardens its insistence that it will do anything it feels necessary to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb.

2010: A US audit finds the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 per cent of US$9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.

2018: CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves is accused of sexual misconduct in The New Yorker by journalist Ronan Farrow.

2019: At least 65 mourners are killed by suspected Boko Haram militants in a gun attack at a funeral near Maiduguri, in north-east Nigeria. US President Trump calls Baltimore a “disgusting, rat- and rodent-infested mess”, and says Congress Rep Elijah Cummings is responsible.

2020: US Congressman John Lewis becomes the first black lawmaker to lie in state in the Rotunda in Washington DC

2021: Iraqi antiquities numbering 17,000 are returned to Baghdad in the largest-ever repatriation of looted items, including some from Hobby Lobby’s Museum of the Bible and Cornell University in the USA.

2022: A 170-carat pink diamond, the “Lulo Rose”, is thought to be the largest discovered in 300 years when it is found in Angola.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Kukai, Japanese Buddhist saint (774-835); Ludovico Sforza, Italian Renaissance prince (1452-1508); George Constantine Linton, Jamaican former cricketer (1873-1960); Ernst Dohnanyi, Hungarian composer (1877-1960); Geoffrey De Havilland, English aircraft designer (1882-1965); Bobbie Gentry, American country singer (1944- ); George Constantine Linton, former Jamaican cricketer (1873-1960)

— AP/Jamaica Observer/Britanica