Today is the 353rd day of 2022. There are 12 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1958: In the first radio broadcast from space, US President Dwight D Eisenhower’s Christmas message declares “to all mankind, America’s wish for peace on Earth and goodwill to men everywhere”.

OTHER EVENTS

1843: Charles Dickens’ classic Yuletide tale, A Christmas Carol, is first published in England.

1885: Germany’s dispute with Spain over the Caroline Islands in the Pacific is settled in favour of Spain.

1907: A coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania, kills 239 workers.

1932: The British Broadcasting Corporation begins transmitting overseas with its “Empire Service” to Australia.

1941: German dictator Adolf Hitler dismisses his chief of staff and takes personal command of the German army after military setbacks.

1961: Goa and two other Portuguese-controlled enclaves on India’s west coast fall to forces of the Indian Government.

1966: The UN General Assembly endorses a draft treaty banning the use of weapons of mass destruction in space.

1972: The Apollo 17 spacecraft splashes down on target in the Pacific Ocean, ending the US Apollo programme of landing men on the Moon.

1978: The Indian Parliament ousts former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi from her newly elected seat and orders her jailed for contempt and breach of privilege.

1984: Prime ministers Margaret Thatcher of Britain and Zhao Ziyang of China sign a joint declaration spelling out the terms for Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.

1992: Taiwan holds its first full legislative elections after retiring hundreds of lawmakers who were elected in China in 1949 and stayed in office.

1994: Russian helicopters and aerplanes bomb Grozny, capital of the breakaway Chechnya region.

1995: The first Russian soldiers arrive in Bosnia for a NATO-led peacekeeping mission.

1996: Former Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao steps down from his last government post following corruption charges.

1998: As US forces bomb Iraq the US House of Representatives impeaches President Bill Clinton for obstructing justice and lying under oath about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

1999: Survivors wander through streets that are covered with rocks and mud as the death toll from massive mudslides and flooding in Venezuela surpasses 5,000.

2001: Jobless Argentines unleash their anger over a deep economic tailspin in a burst of looting and violence that targets supermarkets and shops on the fringes of Buenos Aires.

2002: US Secretary of State Colin Powell says Iraq is in “material breach” of UN Security Council resolutions for alleged omissions in a declaration of its weapons programmes.

2003: Libya agrees to abandon its programmes pursuing internationally banned weapons, including chemical, biological and nuclear weapons as well as long-range missiles. It agrees to respect the Nuclear Weapon Non-Proliferation Treaty.

2004: Car bombs rock Iraq’s two holiest Shiite cities, killing at least 62 people and wounding more than 120; while in downtown Baghdad dozens of gunmen carry out a brazen ambush, pulling out three election officials and executing them on the pavement in the middle of morning traffic.

2005: Uganda’s main Opposition leader pleads not guilty to treason charges in a trial supporters claim is being staged to keep him out of the 2006 presidential elections.

2006: A Libyan court convicts five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor and condemns them to death for infecting 400 children with HIV. Nearly seven months later they are allowed to return to Bulgaria.

2007: Former Hyundai CEO Lee Myung-bak claims victory in South Korea’s presidential election as voters overlook fraud allegations in hopes he will revive the economy.

2008: The Pentagon formally approves war crimes charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Guantanamo detainee accused of masterminding the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen.

2009: After months of denials, Iran acknowledges that at least three people detained in the country’s post-election turmoil were beaten to death by their jailers.

2010: Police in Denmark and Sweden say they thwarted a terrorist attack possibly hours before it was to begin, arresting five men they say planned to shoot as many people as possible in a Copenhagen building housing the newsroom of a paper that published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

2013: Egypt’s military-backed authorities step up their crackdown on liberal icons of the 2011 uprising against President Hosni Mubarak with security forces storming the headquarters of a rights group and arresting six activists.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Su Tung-p’o, Chinese poet (1036-1101); Sir Ralph Richardson, British actor (1902-1983); Leonid I Brezhnev, Soviet Communist Party chief (1906-1982); Jean Genet, French writer (1910-1986); Cicely Tyson, American actress (1924-2021);; Richard E Leakey, Kenyan paleontologist (1944- ); Alyssa Jayne Milano, actress and activist (1972- ); Lady Sovereign, British rapper (1985- )

– AP