Today is the 18th day of 2021. There are 347 days left in the year.

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT

2007: A woman who disappeared in the jungles of north-eastern Cambodia is found 19 years later. The woman — identified as Rochom P'ngieng, 27 — does not speak any intelligible language, but is recognised by a village policeman who claims to be her father.

OTHER EVENTS

1520: King Christian II of Denmark and Norway defeats Swedes at Lake Asunden and subsequently conquers Sweden.

1535: The city of Lima, capital of present-day Peru, is founded by Spanish conquistadors on the central Pacific coast of South America.

1701: Brandenburg's Frederick III is crowned Frederick I, King of Prussia.

1778: English navigator Captain James Cook discovers the Hawaiian Islands, which he dubs the Sandwich Islands.

1788: The first English settlers arrive in Australia's Botany Bay to establish a penal colony.

1871: While Prussian guns bombard Paris, the Reich is formed when William I of Prussia is crowned the first emperor of Germany.

1912: English explorer Robert F Scott and his expedition reach the South Pole, only to discover Norwegian Roald Amundsen had got there first.

1915: With the European powers preoccupied with World War I, Japan secretly presents China with Twenty-one Demands for privileges.

1918: The first democratically elected national legislature in Russia opens in Petrograd. The Bolsheviks soon shut it down, marking the start of Communist dictatorship.

1919: The World War I Peace Congress opens in Versailles, France.

1943: The Soviets announce they have broken the long Nazi siege of Leningrad.

1952: Anti-British riots break out in Egypt.

1967: Albert DeSalvo, who claimed to be the “Boston Strangler”, is convicted in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of armed robbery, assault and sex offences.

1968: United States and Soviet Union agree on draft treaty to control nuclear weapons.

1976: France expels at least 40 Soviet officials on grounds they have worked as spies.

1977: Australia's worst rail crash, at Granville, Sydney, kills 83 when train hits concrete bridge.

1989: Thousands of Czechoslovaks converge on Prague's central Wenceslas Square chanting “freedom”, “truth”, and “human rights” on fourth-consecutive day of public dissent.

1990: Peggy McMartin Buckey is cleared of 52 child molestation charges. Right wing gunman wounds mayor of Nagasaki, Japan, who had said late Emperor Hirohito bore partial responsibility for World War II.

1991: Jordan's Parliament denounces allied attacks on Iraq and urges Arab and Islamic nations to strike back at US and coalition partners.

1992: More than 100,000 people attend Kenya's first legal anti-Government rally in 22 years.

1993: An avalanche plows into a village in north-east Turkey, destroying 50 houses and killing at least 16 people.

1995: A US jury awards more than 9,000 victims of torture under the regime of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos with US$766 million from the Marcos estate.

1996: A suspected arson fire races through an immigrant shelter in Luebeck, Germany, killing at least nine and injuring 55.

1997: Norway's Boerge Ousland emerges on the Pacific edge of Antarctica to become the first person to cross the continent alone and unaided.

2000: Helmut Kohl resigns as honorary chairman of the Christian Democratic Union, brought down by a campaign financing scandal that marks the stunning denouement of one of Europe's most respected statesmen and the man who reunited Germany.

2002: The Sierra Leone Government declares the country's 11-year-old civil war, which killed about 50,000 people, over.

2005: The Supreme Court says the results of Ukraine's presidential election can be published before it rules on an appeal by the losing candidate, suggesting the way is open for the inauguration of Western-leaning reformer Viktor Yushchenko.

2006: President Laurent Gbagbo calls on his supporters to end days of violent street protests that have roiled Ivory Coast's Government-held south, telling protesters to go home and asking fearful workers to return to their jobs.

2008: Maasai fighters in Kenya battle rival tribesmen loyal to President Mwai Kibaki on the third, final and bloodiest day of protests over Kenya's disputed election.

2009: Israeli troops begin to withdraw from Gaza after their Government and Hamas militants declare an end to a three-week war.

2011: The UN tribunal investigating the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister warns against speculating about the sealed indictment as a quiet show of force by Hezbollah rattles nerves amid fears the militant group will react violently if accused.

2012: Italians tally 11 dead, 21 missing from cruise ship disaster in which the US$450-million Costa Concordia, carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew, slammed into a reef and flopped on its side off the tiny Italian island of Giglio after the captain made an unauthorised detour on his route.

TODAY'S BITRTHDAYS

Francois Michel Detellier, French statesman (1641-1691); Cary Grant, English-American actor (1904-1986); Paul Keating, former Australian prime minister (1944- ); Kevin Costner, US actor/director (1955- ); Jesse L Martin, US actor (1969- )

— AP