Today is the 118th day of 2022. There are 247 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1967: Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the United States Army, the same day US Army General William C Westmoreland tells Congress the US “would prevail in Vietnam”.

OTHER EVENTS

1521: Holy Roman Emperor Charles V grants his brother, Archduke Ferdinand, the Hapsburg possessions in Lower Austria, Carinthia, Styria and Carinola.

1655: English fleet destroys pirate fleet of Bey of Tunis and releases prisoners in Algiers.

1770: British navigator Captain James Cook, aboard Endeavour, lands in Australia, naming the natural harbour Botany Bay — now in suburbs of Sydney.

1876: Britain’s Queen Victoria is declared Empress of India.

1910: Albanian revolt is suppressed by Turkish Army.

1918: Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the archduke’s wife, Sophie, dies in prison of tuberculosis.

1936: King Farouk ascends to throne in Egypt; Arab high command is formed to unite Arabs against Jewish claims.

1945: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are executed by Italian partisans as they attempt to flee the country.

1952: War with Japan officially ends as a treaty signed in San Francisco the year before takes effect. General Dwight D Eisenhower resigns as supreme allied commander in Europe.

1974: A federal jury in New York acquits former Attorney General John Mitchell and former Commerce Secretary Maurice H Stans of charges in connection with a secret US$200,000 contribution to President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign from financier Robert Vesco.

1992: A new, smaller Yugoslavia is established by Serbia and Montenegro after four other republics, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia secede.

1994: Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who betrayed US secrets to the Soviet Union, pleads guilty to espionage and tax evasion. He is sentenced to life in prison without parole.

2000: Guerrillas blow up an Israeli-controlled military outpost in southern Lebanon, killing four pro-Israeli militiamen and wounding three others.

2001: A Russian rocket lifts off from Central Asia bearing the first space tourist, California businessman Dennis Tito, and two cosmonauts on a journey to the international space station. Two thousand people attend an anti-government rally in Singapore demanding more civil liberties and protesting against the ruling party.

2003: Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline PLC, the world’s largest producer of AIDS drugs, announces it will reduce the price of its popular AIDS medication Combivir to US$0.90 a day, from US$1.70, in 63 developing countries.

2005: Iraq’s National Assembly approves the country’s first democratically elected government, a Shiite-dominated body that excludes the Sunni minority from meaningful positions and threatens efforts to dampen the deadly insurgency.

2006: Storms batter eastern Texas with winds up to 100 miles per hour and hail the size of baseballs. The International Atomic Energy Agency says in a report that Iran has defied a UN Security Council call to freeze uranium enrichment and is stonewalling efforts to determine if it is developing nuclear arms.

2008: Austrian Josef Fritzl, 73, confesses to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in a windowless cell with a soundproof door and fathering seven children. He also tells investigators he tossed the body of one of the children in an incinerator when the infant died after birth.

2011: The moderate Palestinian president plays down concerns that his emerging alliance with militant Hamas will undermine peace negotiations with Israel, insisting he will retain control over foreign policy and remain committed to resolving the conflict.

2012: Syria derides UN chief Ban Ki-moon as biased and calls his comments “outrageous” after he blames the regime for widespread ceasefire violations — the latest sign of trouble for an international peace plan many expect to fail.

2013: The fugitive owner of an illegally constructed building that collapsed and killed at least 377 people in Bangladesh is captured by a commando force as he tries to flee to India.

2015: Nigerian troops rescue nearly 300 girls and women during an offensive against Boko Haram militants in the north-east Sambia forest; those rescued do not include any of the schoolgirls kidnapped a year earlier from Chibok.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Yi Sun-shin, Korean admiral and national hero (1545-1598); James Monroe, US president (1758-1831); Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, Portuguese dictator (1889-1970); Harper Lee, US author (1926-2016) Saddam Hussein, Iraqi dictator (1937-2006); Alfred Louis Valentine, cricketer (1930-2004); Penelope Cruz, Spanish actress (1974- ); Jessica Alba, US actress (1981- ); Jay Leno, former Tonight Show host (1950- ); Chuck Leavell, rock musician (1952- ); Too Short, rapper (1966- ); Bridget Moynahan, actress (1971- ); Chris Young, actor (1971- ); Jorge Garcia, actor (1973- ); Elisabeth Rohm, actress (1973- ); Nate Richert, actor (1978- ); Harry Shum Jr, actor (1982- ); Jenna Ushkowitz, actress (1986- ).

— AP