Today is the 210th day of 2020. There are 156 days left in the year.

TODAY HIGHLIGHT

1976: An earthquake kills more than 240,000 people and almost completely destroys the city of T’ang-shan in north-eastern China.

OTHER EVENTS

1540: Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex and King Henry VIII’s chief minister, is executed in England for treason on the same day Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard.

1588: Lord Admiral Howard of Effingham sends British fire ships to destroy Spanish Armada off Calais, France.

1643: English parliamentarian force under Oliver Cromwell takes Gainsborough.

1742: Peace of Berlin between Austria and Prussia ends first Silesian War. Silesia is a historical region that is now south-western Poland.

1794: French revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre and 22 of his supporters are executed by guillotine before a cheering crowd in Paris.

1821: Peru’s independence from Spain is formally declared.

1866: Danish Constitution is revised to favour the king and Upper House.

1904: Russia’s Minister of Interior Viacheslav Plehve is assassinated by a socialist.

1914: World War I begins when Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.

1937: Japanese seize Beijing in China and subsequently occupy it until 1945.

1945: US Army bomber crashes into Empire State Building in New York City, killing 13 people.

1959: Preparing for statehood, Hawaiians vote to send the first Chinese-American, Hiram L Fong, to the US Senate and the first Japanese-American, Daniel K Inouye, to the House of Representatives.

1965: President Lyndon Johnson announces he is increasing the number of American troops in South Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000.

1976: An earthquake kills more than 240,000 people and almost completely destroys the city of T’ang-shan in north-eastern China.

1986: A car stuffed with explosives rips through a densely populated residential Christian area of east Beirut, killing at least 32 and wounding 140.

1989: India agrees to pull its peacekeeping troops out of Sri Lanka two years after pushing through a ceasefire between separatist Tamil Tiger rebels and the Sri Lankan Government.

1990: Alberto Fujimori takes over as Peru’s president.

1992: The UN Security Council authorises an urgent airlift of food and medicine for Somalia and demands the cooperation of warring factions.

1996: A 69-day prison hunger strike that killed 12 inmates ends in Turkey after concessions from the Government on prison conditions.

1997: Fierce fighting in Afghanistan sends villagers fleeing, but the Taliban Islamic army holds fast to its positions outside the capital of Kabul.

1998: Backed by tanks, Serb forces drive ethnic Albanian fighters from their stronghold in Malisevo in central Kosovo.

1999: After weeks of mass pro-democracy demonstrations, Iranian President Mohammed Khatami makes his first public appearance, pledging to continue a reformist agenda. Hardliners oppose his programme for greater political and social rights and attempt to retake control.

2000: Peruvians furious with the presidential inauguration of Alberto Fujimori protest in the streets of Lima, setting government buildings ablaze and throwing rocks. At least five die and dozens are injured.

2001: Alejandro Toledo of the centrist Peru Possible Party is sworn in as president of Peru. Peru’s former spy chief, Vladimir Montesinos, tells the ex-wife of former President Alberto Fujimori that the autocratic leader ordered her to be killed.

2005: The Irish Republican Army announces it is renouncing violence as a political weapon and pledges to resume disarmament — a potential breakthrough after years of deadlock.

2007: The Liberian Government lifts a self-imposed moratorium on the mining, sale and export of diamonds that had been in place for six years, since the stones came under UN sanctions when ex-President Charles Taylor’s Government was accused of using revenues to fuel war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

2008: Suicide bombers strike a Shiite Muslim pilgrimage in Baghdad and a Kurdish protest rally in northern Iraq, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 300.

2009: Iraqi forces raid a camp housing members of an Iranian opposition group north of Baghdad in a move that runs contrary to US wishes and prompts clashes.

2010: Lawmakers in the region of Catalonia thrust a sword deep into Spain’s centuries-old tradition of bullfighting, banning the blood-soaked pageant that has fascinated artists and writers from Goya to Hemingway.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Ibn al-‘Arabi, Arab theologist (1165-1240); Jacopo Sannazzaro, Italian poet, (1456-1530); Judith Leyster, Dutch painter (1609-1660); Beatrix Potter, British author and illustrator (1866-1943); Marcel Duchamp, French-born American painter (1887-1968); Jacques Piccard, French deep-sea explorer (1922-2008); Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, former US first lady (1929-1994); Jacques d’Amboise, US ballet dancer (1934- ); Jim Davis, ‘Garfield’ US cartoonist (1945- )

— AP