Today is the 271st day of 2026. There are 94 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1995: Israel and Palestinians sign a historic accord at the White House, in Washington, to extend Palestinian rule on the strife-ridden West Bank.

OTHER EVENTS

48 BC: Pompey the Great is assassinated on orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt, after landing in that country.

235: Pope Pontian becomes the first Pope to abdicate from the role, for St Anterus.

351: Roman Emperor Constantius II defeats the usurper Magnentius in the Battle of Mursa, the bloodiest battle of the fourth century.

365: Roman usurper Procopius bribes two legions passing by Constantinople, and proclaims himself Roman emperor.

1066: William, duke of Normandy, lands in south-eastern England, thus beginning the Norman Conquest which results in his becoming king.

1687: Turks surrender Athens to Venetians, but retake it a year later.

1716: Treaty of Hanover between England and France leads to Triple Alliance with Holland.

1781: The Siege of Yorktown begins, eventually leading on October 19 to the surrender of the British by General Lord Cornwallis and the end of the American Revolution.

1787: Congress votes to send the just-completed US Constitution to state legislatures for their approval.

1850: Flogging is abolished as a form of punishment in the US Navy.

1920: A grand jury indicts eight members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team, accused of throwing the 1919 World Series and dubbed the Black Sox.

1924: Two US Army planes land in Seattle, Washington, completing the first round-the-world flight in 175 days.

1928: Scottish medical researcher Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin, the first effective antibiotic.

1941: A Nazi German terror campaign begins in Czechoslovakia.

1950: Indonesia is admitted to the United Nations.

1958: The new 5th Republican French Constitution is approved.

1965: A volcano 55 kilometres (35 miles) south of Manila in Philippines erupts, killing at least 184 people.

1970: President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt dies of a heart attack. Anwar Sadat replaces him.

1972: Japan and Communist China agree to re-establish diplomatic relations.

1977: Japanese terrorists hold 156 hostages on a hijacked Japanese airliner at Dhaka, Bangladesh.

1980: Iran rejects a UN Security Council resolution to end the war with Iraq, stating Iraq is violating its territorial sovereignty and fomenting rebellion among Iran’s minority population in the Khuzistan and Kurdistan provinces.

1984: Indian authorities order the temporary closure of the Golden Temple Sikh shrine in Amritsar.

1987: India and Sri Lanka’s Tamil guerrilla group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, agree to an accord that gives the Tigers a council majority to administer the semi-autonomous northern and eastern provinces in Sri Lanka.

1991: Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko agrees to form a coalition Government with Opposition leaders after five days of rioting; it is the first time in his 26 years of rule that he agrees to share power.

1993: A natural gas pipeline explodes beneath a busy highway in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, killing 50 people.

1997: Swiss voters overwhelmingly approve their country’s liberal drug policies, including the dispensation of heroin to addicts.

2001: The United Nations Security Council ends sanctions against Sudan; the sanctions had been imposed in 1996 after Sudan refused to extradite suspects in a 1995 attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Both Egypt and Ethiopia, where the assassination attempt occurred, wanted the sanctions lifted.

2003: Tennis player Althea Gibson — the first African American to win singles titles at the French Open (1956), Wimbledon (1957–58), and the US Open (1957–58) — dies at age 76. Pope John Paul II appoints 31 Roman Catholic prelates to the College of Cardinals, entitling most of those selected to vote for the next pope.

2008: Chinese astronauts aboard the
Shenzhou 7 returned to Earth after completing their country’s first spacewalk mission. Austrian 16-year-olds voted for the first time in parliamentary elections under a law adopted in 2007.

2009: Rescuers pull more bodies from swollen rivers as residents start to dig their homes out from under carpets of mud after flooding left 140 people dead in the Philippine capital and surrounding towns.

2010: The youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is elected to his first prominent posts in the ruling Workers’ Party, putting him well on the path to succeed his father as leader.

2012: President Barack Obama, citing national security risks, blocks a Chinese company from owning four wind farm projects in the western state of Oregon near a navy base where the US military flies unmanned drones and electronic-warfare planes on training missions.

2016: Polish-born Israeli statesman Shimon Peres — who served as prime minister (1984–86 and 1995–96) and president (2007–14) of Israel, and who shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994 for helping to negotiate the Oslo Accords (the historic Israeli-PLO peace agreement of 1993) — dies in Ramat Gan.

2017: The USA’s Donald Trump Administration says its relief efforts in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria are succeeding, though people on the island say help is scarce and disorganised.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Prosper Merimee, French author (1803-1870); Georges Clemenceau, French premier (1841-1929); Peter Finch, Australian actor (1916-1977); Marcello Mastroianni, Italian actor (1924-1996); Olive Lewin, Jamaican author, musicologist and social anthropologist (1927-2013); Brigitte Bardot, French actress (1934-2025); Ben E King, US singer (1938-2015); John Sayles, US film director/writer (1950- ); Janeane Garofalo, actress (1964- ); Mira Sorvino, actress (1967- ); Naomi Watts, actress (1968- )

— AP/ Jamaica Observer