Today is the 206th day of 2022. There are 159 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1978: The world’s first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, is born — a 5-pound, 12-ounce (2.58-kilogramme) healthy girl delivered by Caesarean section in Lancashire, England.

OTHER EVENTS

1593: France’s King Henry IV becomes a Roman Catholic for the second and final time in an effort to gain Paris and be recognised as the legitimate king.

1689: France’s King Louis XIV declares war on Britain after England, the Dutch and the Austrian Hapsburgs unite in the Grand Alliance to resist Louis’s expansionism.

1792: Austria’s Duke of Brunswick issues manifesto threatening destruction of Paris if France’s royal family is harmed. This assures the fall of the monarchy when agitators decide this is proof of Louis XVI’s traitorous dealings.

1814: English engineer George Stephenson introduces his first steam locomotive, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on the Killingworth wagonway named Blücher.

1830: France’s King Charles X issues ordinances controlling the press, dissolving legislative chambers, and changing electoral system.

1878: China’s first diplomatic mission to the United States arrives in Washington.

1894: The Japanese navy defeats a Chinese fleet in Kanghwa Bay, sparking Sino-Japanese War over influence in Korea.

1920: French forces occupy Damascus, Syria; Greeks under King Alexander occupy Adrianople in north-western Turkey.

1934: Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss is assassinated in unsuccessful Nazi coup attempt in Austria.

1943: Benito Mussolini is forced to resign as prime minister of Italy during World War II.

1952: Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.

1956: Italian liner Andrea Doria and Swedish ship Stockholm collide off the coast of North America. Fifty lives are lost.

1957: Tunisia becomes independent from France with Habib Bourgiba as president.

1963: United States, Soviet Union and Britain conclude treaty prohibiting nuclear testing in atmosphere, space or under water.

1965: At the Newport (Rhode Island) Folk Festival, American singer and songwriter Bob Dylan initially eschews his acoustic guitar to go electric; the controversial performance is considered one of the most pivotal moments in the history of rock and roll.

1968: Pope Paul VI bans all artificial birth control methods for Roman Catholics.

1969: The Guam Doctrine — also known as US President Richard M Nixon’s Doctrine — is first publicly proclaimed; at its core is the notion that there is a five-sided power balance in the world — the United States, Russia, Japan, Western Europe and China — and that US allies should do more to defend themselves.

1971: Dr Christiaan Barnard transplants two lungs and a heart into a man in Cape Town, South Africa, and the operation is described as successful.

1973: Federal judge rules that US Government must halt bombing of Cambodia on grounds it is “unauthorised and unlawful”.

1984: Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya becomes the first woman to walk in space.

1988: A group of 700 Aborigines riot in Geraldton, western Australia following the funeral of an Aboriginal man who died in police custody.

1990: Liberian rebels attack an airfield in Monrovia, closing off that city’s last link to the outside world.

1991: Mikhail Gorbachev tells Communist Party leaders that building communism in the Soviet Union is no longer a realistic goal and that the party must reject “outdated ideological dogmas”.

1992: Italian Government sends 7,000 soldiers to Sicily in a Mafia crackdown.

1993: Black gunmen attack church near Cape Town, killing 10 white worshippers.

1996: A hijacker holds an Algerian jetliner for five hours at an airport in western Algeria before he is overpowered. All 232 people aboard are unharmed.

1997: The Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia hold an apparently fake trial of their former leader Pol Pot, who is sentenced to house arrest.

1998: Government officials say US President Bill Clinton has been subpoenaed to testify in the Monica Lewinsky case.

2000: A Concorde supersonic airplane — Air France flight 4590 — crashes outside Paris, killing all 109 people on-board and four others on the ground; the event is believed to have hastened the end of all Concorde operations three years later.

2002: Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen accused of conspiring with 19 hijackers in the September 11 attacks, withdraws his guilty plea in a US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia.

2003: Argentine President Nestor Kirchner revokes a decree that prohibits the extradition of Argentine officials accused of torture or murder during the 1976-83 military dictatorship’s “dirty war” against leftist opponents.

2004: Israelis form a human chain stretching 55 miles (90 kilometres) from Gaza to Jerusalem to protest Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza Strip withdrawal plan, as violence leaves six Palestinian militants dead and five Israeli children wounded in the bloodiest clash in the West Bank in a month.

2005: US and North Korean envoys meet as delegations hold last-minute strategy sessions on the eve of renewed six-nation talks aimed at ending the North’s nuclear ambitions.

2006: Thousands of Opposition supporters in Congo clash with riot police, burning President Joseph Kabila’s campaign posters before historic weekend elections meant to bring lasting peace to the nation.

2007: Indian lawyer and politician Pratibha Patil is sworn in as president of India, becoming the first woman to hold that office. Two suicide car bombings strike soccer fans in Baghdad as they celebrate Iraq’s victory in the Asian Cup semi-final, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 100.

2008: US President George W Bush signs an executive order to expand sanctions against individuals and organisations in Zimbabwe associated with the regime of President Robert Mugabe.

2010: President Hugo Chavez threatens to cut off oil sales to the United States if Venezuela is attacked by its US-allied neighbour Colombia in a dispute over allegations Venezuela gives haven to Colombian rebels.

2012: North Korea ends weeks of speculation by confirming that the mystery woman beside young leader Kim Jon Un at recent public events is indeed his wife, “Comrade Ri Sol Ju”.

2011: The self-described perpetrator of Norway’s deadly bombing and shooting rampage is ordered held in solitary confinement after calmly telling a court that two other cells of collaborators stand ready to join his murderous campaign.

2013: A Spanish train that hurtles off the rails and smashes into a security wall as it rounds a bend was going so fast that carriages tumbled off the tracks like dominoes, killing 80 people and maiming dozens more.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Arthur J Balfour, English statesman (1848-1930); Maxfield Parrish, US illustrator/painter (1870-1966), Davidson Black (1884-1934), Canadian physician/anthropologist, Elias Canetti, Bulgarian writer and Nobel laureate (1905-1994); Johnny Hodges, jazz alto saxophonist (1906-1970 ); Estelle Getty, US actress (1923-2008); Rita Marley, reggae singer and philanthropist (1946- ); Iman, Somali model/actress (1955- ); Matt LeBlanc, US actor (1967- ).

– AP and Jamaica Observer