Today is the 11th day of 2024. There are 355 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1964: US Surgeon General Luther Terry issues the first government report saying smoking may be hazardous to one’s health.

OTHER EVENTS

49 BC: Roman Emperor Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon river and moves his troops into an offensive position in the war against Pompeii.

1569: First lottery in England is drawn in St Paul’s Cathedral under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I.

1866: Ship London is wrecked en route to Australia. Some 231 people die.

1919: Romania annexes Transylvania.

1935: Aviator Amelia Earhart begins a trip from Honolulu to Oakland, California, becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.

1939: Abu Dhabi ruler Sheik Shakhbout signs emirate’s first oil agreement with a British-led consortium.

1943: Britain and United States relinquish extraterritorial rights in China.

1970: In Nigeria, 32-month-old secessionist Biafran regime collapses under onslaughts from Nigerian military.

1972: New state of Bangladesh is recognised by East Germany.

1976: President Rodriguez Lara of Ecuador is ousted in a coup.

1977: France sets off an international uproar by releasing Abu Daoud, a Palestinian suspected of involvement in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

1986: L Douglas Wilder becomes Lt governor of Virginia, making him the first African American sworn in as a Southern state official since the American Civil War.

1990: About 250,000 people demonstrate in favour of independence in Lithuanian capital as Mikhail Gorbachev arrives there to persuade the local Communist Party to retract its decision to break with national party.

1998: An armed gang attacks two villages outside Algiers, Algeria, slaughtering 120 people.

1999: Haiti’s President Rene Preval dissolves Parliament after a 22-month impasse with no working Government. He appoints a premier and a Cabinet by decree.

2001: General Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, enters the Santiago military hospital to undergo neurological and mental tests ordered by a judge seeking to try him on human rights charges.

2005: An anti-corruption judge places Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo’s sister under house arrest for masterminding the mass falsification of petition signatures to register his political party.

2006: Peru’s President Alejandro Toledo issues a sharp rebuke to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for openly supporting a nationalist former military officer running in Lima’s upcoming presidential elections.

2008: Eleven US soldiers are convicted and five officers disciplined in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.

2009: Lawmakers, Muslim groups and the Pakistani public criticise Prince Harry after a British newspaper publishes video footage of him using offensive and racist language.

2010: Yemen’s most influential Islamic cleric, considered an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist by the US, warns that the US-backed fight against the terror group could lead to “foreign occupation” of the country.

2011: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange vows to step up his site’s release of secret documents while he fights extradition to Sweden, as his lawyers argue that sending him to Stockholm could land him in Guantanamo Bay or even on US death row.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Francesco Parmigianino, Italian artist (1504-1540); Rod Taylor, Australian actor (1930-2015); Jean Chretien, former Canadian prime minister (1934- ); Clarence Clemons, US saxophonist w/rock group Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (1942-2011); Kim Coles, US actress (1962- ); Mary J Blige, US singer (1971- )

– AP