Today is the 343rd day of 2020. There are 22 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1995: In India, 75 million children get polio vaccines in an attempt to eradicate the crippling disease.

OTHER EVENTS

1625: England and United Provinces agree to subsidise Denmark’s King Christian IV in his campaign against Germany.

1793: Noah Webster establishes New York City’s first daily newspaper — The American Minerva.

1868: The world’s first traffic light was erected near Westminster Bridge in London; however, it was removed a month later after a gas leak caused one of the lights to explode.

1884: Ball-bearing roller skates are patented in the United States.

1905: Separation of Church and state in France is decreed.

1941: China declares war on Japan, Germany and Italy.

1946: Indian Constituent Assembly is boycotted by Muslim League.

1951: The United States invokes its Trading with the Enemy Act to prevent Chinese people in the United States from sending money to Communist China under extortion threats.

1962: Tanganyika becomes republic within British Commonwealth.

1972: North Vietnam and Soviet Union conclude agreement for economic and military aid to Hanoi.

1975: Death toll is put at 160 in two days as war rages between Muslims and Christians in Beirut, Lebanon.

1976: UN General Assembly calls for Middle East peace conference in Geneva with Palestine Liberation Organisation taking part.

1982: South African troops stage a predawn raid on Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, in an effort to kill suspected members of the African National Congress, the black nationalist group banned in South Africa.

1987: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meets with US President Ronald Reagan in Washington one day after the US-Soviet nuclear arms treaty is signed.

1990: Poles elect Solidarity labour union founder Lech Walesa president in free elections. Slobodan Milošević was reelected president of Serbia at the head of the Socialist Party, formerly the League of Communists of Serbia (LCS).

1991: Gorbachev calls new Commonwealth of Independent States “illegal and dangerous”.

1992: Prince Charles and Princess Diana of Britain announce they are separating but have no plans to divorce.

1994: US President Bill Clinton fires Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders after learning she had told a conference that masturbation should be discussed in school as a part of human sexuality. Reggae singer Garnett Silk dies.

1997: Spain softens its long-standing claim on the British colony of Gibraltar, saying it can accept shared sovereignty.

1998: British Home Secretary Jack Straw rules that Spain can start proceedings to extradite former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Chile withdraws its ambassador from Britain. The United Nations General Assembly declared anti-Semitism a form of racism.

1999: US Army private Calvin N Glover, convicted of bludgeoning fellow soldier Barry Winchell to death, is sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors accused Glover of homophobia.

2001: The United States discloses a video in which Osama bin Laden says he was pleasantly surprised by the extent of damage from the Septenber 11 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

2002: The Indonesian Government and the Free Aceh Movement sign a peace agreement to end the rebel group’s 26-year-old separatist insurgency in Aceh province, which left as many as 30,000 people dead.

2004: Canada’s Supreme Court rules that gay marriage is constitutional, a landmark opinion allowing the federal government to call on Parliament to legalise same-sex unions nationwide.

2007: The world’s top two polluters, the US and China, say they are not ready to commit to mandatory caps on global-warming gases at the UN climate conference 1n Bali.

2008: Masked youths and looters maraud through Greek cities for a fourth night in an explosion of rage triggered by the police shooting of a teenager that has unleashed the most violent riots in a-quarter-century.

2010: In Britain’s worst political violence in years, furious student protesters rain sticks and rocks on riot police, vandalise government buildings and attack a car carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, after lawmakers approved a controversial hike in university tuition fees.

2011: European leaders agree to redefine their continent — hoping that by joining their fiscal fortunes they might stop a crippling debt crisis, save the euro currency and prevent worldwide economic chaos. Britain says no, risking isolation.

2012: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez heads back to Cuba for a third cancer surgery after naming his vice-president as his choice to lead the country if the illness cuts short his presidency.

2013: American and British intelligence operations have been spying on gamers across the world, media outlets report, saying that the world’s most powerful espionage agencies sent undercover agents into virtiual universes to monitor activity in online fantasy games such as World of Warcraft.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

John Milton, English poet (1608-1674); Karl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish chemist (1742-1786); Claude-Louis Ertholle, French chemist (1748-1822); Kirk Douglas, US actor (1916-2020); Bob Hawke, former Australian prime minister (1929-2019); Judi Dench, British actress (1934-): Beau Bridges, US actor (1941-); John Malkovich, US actor (1953- )

— AP