Today is the 286th day of 2026. There are 79 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT 2012: Iran says it is ready to show flexibility at nuclear talks to ease Western concerns over its contentious nuclear programme, as tensions rise in the stand-off between the Islamic Republic, Israel and the West.

OTHER EVENTS 54: Nero succeeds Claudius as emperor of the Roman Empire; Agrippina the Younger is thought to have murdered Emperor Claudius, her husband, with poisonous mushrooms so as to secure the succession for her son Nero.

1269: The new Gothic-style Westminster Abbey is consecrated by Henry III after the bones of Edward the Confessor are transferred to it; construction began in 1220.

1307: French King Philip IV has Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Knights Templar arrested and charged with idolatry and corruption.

1448: The first assembly takes place of Catalan dioceses to choose their syndics (representative) to plead abolition of serfdom to King Alfons IV — the first official recognition of serfs organising to defend their rights.

1536: The pilgrimage of Grace begins in Northern England — a protest against King Henry VIII’s break with the pope and the dissolution of the monasteries.

1629: The Dutch West Indies Company grants religious freedom in the West Indies.

1660: Absolute monarchy is instituted by decree in Denmark by King Frederick III.

1775: The first US Navy forms when the Continental Congress in Philadelphia orders the construction of a naval fleet.

1843: B’nai B’rith, the oldest and largest Jewish service organisation in the world, is founded in New York City, United States.

1860: James Wallace Black captures a photographic view from a hot air balloon tethered above Boston Common, in Boston Massachusetts, USA; the first aerial photo taken in the US is also the oldest-surviving of its kind.

1864: Maryland voters adopt a new constitution that includes the abolition of slavery.

1881: A revival of Hebrew language takes place as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and friends agree to use Hebrew exclusively in their conversations.

1884: The International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC, establishes Greenwich in London, England, as the prime meridian of longitude and establishes Universal Time.

1899: Some 7,000 laid-off black mine workers of South Africa reach Natal.

1903: In the first Baseball World Series, the Boston Americans (later Boston Red Sox) defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates 3-0 for a 5-3 series victory.

1914: American inventor Garrett Morgan patents his safety hood device, which is later refined into the gas mask.

1936: An explosion caused by leaking gas rips out section 12 of Cleveland Stadium, USA.

1941: Nazis kill 11,000 Jewish children and old people in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine; additional murders continue on the 14th.

1950: The film classic All About Eve premieres in both Paris and New York City; it wins six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

1953: The burglar alarmultrasonic or radio waves is patented by Samuel Bagno.

1960: Opponents of Fidel Castro are executed in Cuba.

1964: Plesman airport, Curacao, records 125.5 millimetres (4.94 inches) of rainfall.

1972: A Uruguayan plane goes down carrying a rugby team, their friends and family; of the 45 people onboard, 33 survive though many are injured and remain stranded in the remote Andes Mountains over the next two months when 17 more die and survivors resort to cannibalism to stay alive.

The remaining 16 survivors are rescued December 22–23.

1976: The first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle is obtained by Dr F A Murphy, working at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

A Bolivian Boeing 707 cargo jet crashes in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, killing 100; 97 of the persons, mostly children, are killed on the ground.

1978: Swaziland’s new constitution promulgates a ban on political parties.

1980: The unprovoked slayings of six blacks takes place in Buffalo, New York, USA.

1983: Ameritech Mobile Communications (now Cingular) launches the first US cellular network in Chicago, Illinois.

1984: John Henry becomes the first thoroughbred to win US$6 million.

1988: The Shroud of Turin, revered by many Christians as Christ’s burial cloth, is shown by carbon-dating tests to be a fake from the Middle Ages.

1990: General Michel Aoun, the Christian army commander who defied the Syrian-backed Lebanese Government for more than two years, surrenders power in the face of a Syrian-led military attack during the civil war.

1991: A total of 21 blacks are killed in a series of attacks in South Africa’s black townships.

1994: In the largest deal between software firms, Intuit Inc accepts a US$1.5-billion takeover offer from Microsoft Corporation.

1995: The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded jointly to Polish physicist Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, for their work to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons.

1996: In response to strikes at its Canadian plants, General Motors Corporation lays off more than 1,300 workers at its Cadillac assembly plant outside Detroit, USA.

1997: Andy Green’s jet-powered car reaches a record 749.69 miles per hour (mph).

1999: French lawmakers adopt a law giving unwed gay and straight couples the same rights previously limited to the married.

2001: President Hosni Mubarak issues an order that 83 suspected Islamic militants stand trial in Egypt’s State security court.

2004: The O’Reilly Factor producer Andrea Mackris files a sexual harassment lawsuit against host Bill O’Reilly.

2006: Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded win the Nobel Peace Prize for their pioneering use of tiny loans — microcredit — to lift millions out of poverty.

2010: Miners are rescued from beneath the Chilean earth and hoisted through 2,000 feet (600 metres) of rock following the longest underground entrapment in history of 69 days, after their mine collapses in the Atacama Desert.

2011: Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund billionaire at the centre of the biggest insider trading case in US history, is sentenced to 11 years behind bars — the stiffest punishment ever handed out for the crime.

2012: Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild sells for US$34 million, the highest-selling artwork by a living artist.

2013: Some 109 people are killed in a stampede on a bridge in Datia district, Madhya Pradesh, India.

2014: Gay rights groups hail a “seismic shift” by the Catholic church toward gays after bishops say homosexuals have gifts to offer the church.

2015: Marlon James becomes the first Jamaican writer to win the Man Booker Prize, for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings.

2016: Donald Trump heatedly rejects the growing list of sexual assault allegations against him as “pure fiction”, hammering his female accusers as “horrible, horrible liars”.

2017: Actress Rose McGowan alleges that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein raped her in 1997.

2018: Pope Francis defrocks two Chilean bishops for alleged sexual abuse of minors.

The oldest known human remains from Poland, dated to 115,000 years prior, are revealed to be a Neanderthal child from the Ciemna Cave who was consumed by a large bird.

2019: Ecuadorean President Lenín Moreno cancels his austerity plan — in a deal with indigenous leaders — restoring fuel subsidies and ending weeks of violent protests.

2021: Rumeysa Gelgi, a 24-year-old from Turkey, is confirmed as the world’s tallest living woman by Guinness World Records at 215.16 centimetres (7 feet, 0.7 inches).

2022: A jury recommends a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for the shooter who pleads guilty to killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, USA, in 2018.

2023: Microsoft completes the largest buyout in gaming history, purchasing Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard for US$69 billion after approval by UK regulators.

2025: Two years after Israel orders 1.1 million people to evacuate from north to south Gaza in anticipation of a ground invasion of the territory — following Hamas’s terrorist attack — Hamas returns the last 20 surviving Israeli hostages while Israel frees about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS Margaret Thatcher, British Conservative politician, Europe’s first woman prime minister, and Britain’s only prime minister in the 20th century to win three (1979–90) consecutive terms (1925- 2013); Turgut Özal, president of Turkey (1927-1993); Maria Cantwell, United States senator (1958- )