Today is the 158th day of 2022. There are 207 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1970: Voters in Switzerland reject proposal to force almost one-third of a million aliens to leave that country.

OTHER EVENTS

1099: The First Crusade reaches its target, Jerusalem, and starts to besiege the city.

1494: The Treaty of Tordesillas — an agreement between Spain and Portugal aimed at settling conflicts over lands newly discovered or explored by Christopher Columbus and other late 15th-century voyagers — is signed.

1546: Peace of Ardres ends England’s war with France and Scotland.

1557: England declares war on France as an ally of Spain; Scots invade England.

1654: Louis XIV is crowned King of France.

1665: Great Plague of London commences and Samuel Pepys writes in his diary of houses marked with a red cross in London’s Drury Lane, meaning somebody inside is infected with the plague and must be locked in for 40 days or until death.

1753: British Museum is founded by an Act of Parliament with royal assent from King George II; the museum opens in 1759.

1776: Richard Lee (Virginia) moves Declaration of Independence in Continental Congress.

1780: Anti-Catholic riot takes place in London during which hundreds die.

1788: French peasants stone the Army in Grenbole, an event known as the Day of the Tiles.

1832: Asian cholera reaches Quebec, brought by Irish immigrants, and kills about 6,000 people in lower Canada.

1862: Britain and US sign treaty to suppress the slave trade. General B Butler orders William Mumford hanged after he removed and destroyed a US flag on display over the New Orleans Mint.

1905: Norwegian Storting, or Parliament, votes for separation from Sweden.

1921: First Parliament of Northern Ireland opens.

1929: Vatican City becomes a sovereign State.

1940: Organised resistance against German invaders ends in Norway in World War II.

1942: Battle of Midway in Pacific ends in major US victory over Japanese in World War II.

1965: The Supreme Court of the United States decides on Griswold v. Connecticut, effectively legalising the use of contraception by married couples.

1967: Israeli forces reach banks of Suez Canal in Egypt, two days into Six-Day War.

1975: US withdraws its last combat aircraft based in Taiwan.

1977: A Bill that virtually would have allowed abortion on demand is unexpectedly killed in the Italian Senate by a two-vote margin. Opposed by the Vatican and the governing Christian Democrats, liberalisation of the Roman Catholic country’s rigorous anti-abortion laws had been a source of political and social strife for several years.

1982: Graceland — Elvis Presley’s home in Memphis, Tennessee, where he died in 1977 — is opened for public tours and becomes one of the top tourist attractions in the United States.

1989: Foreign embassies rush to get their citizens out of Beijing following a crackdown against pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.

1990: US House of Representatives votes to bar the sale of computers and telecommunications gear to Soviet Union until Moscow begins negotiating Lithuania’s independence.

1994: Following two months of genocide, the US agrees to a UN peacekeeping mission to Rwanda after receiving assurances that UN troops would not be called on to fight.

1995: Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui is greeted in California by a cheering crowd of ethnic Chinese as he becomes the island’s first president to set foot in the US.

1996: Negotiators in Vienna agree on how, and when, to reduce arms stockpiles across the former Yugoslavia.

1997: Foreigners flee heavy fighting between rival militias in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.

1998: Lebanon holds its first municipal elections in 35 years. Muslim and Christian voters in Beirut endorse religious harmony.

1999: Indonesians vote in democratic elections for the first time since 1955. More than 96 per cent turn out for the unexpectedly peaceful voting.

2000: A suspected Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam suicide bomber shatters Sri Lanka’s first-ever ‘War Heroes Day’, killing a Cabinet minister and 20 others during a fund-raiser for the families of slain soldiers.

2001: Former Argentine President Carlos Menem is placed under house arrest as part of an alleged arms-trafficking probe. He is released in November after Argentina’s Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors failed to prove he led the conspiracy.

2002: Israeli troops shell Yasser Arafat’s headquarters. The previous day, 17 people were killed in a Palestinian suicide attack that detonated a car bomb by a crowded bus.

2003: A vehicle packed with explosives detonates next to a bus carrying German peacekeeping troops in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, killing four soldiers including an Afghan bystander and wounding 31 others.

2004: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon survives no-confidence votes in parliament, a sign that his coalition is in no immediate danger of collapse despite Cabinet approval of a divisive Gaza withdrawal plan a day earlier.

2005: Riot police in La Paz fire tear gas and clash with protesters, demanding more power for Bolivia’s impoverished Indian majority as an offer by the president to resign fails to halt a crippling blockade in the Bolivian capital.

2006: King Abdullah II of Jordan warns that his country can never again serve as a “substitute homeland” for Palestinians, signalling that Jordan fears a destabilising flood of refugees if Israel unilaterally redraws its borders. Jordanian-born Iraqi militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — the self-styled leader in Iraq of the Islamic militant group al-Qaeda, thought by many to have been the mastermind behind numerous terrorist acts — is killed in a US military air strike.

2008: Hillary Rodham Clinton formally ends her historic bid for the White House and urges her supporters to rally behind ex-rival Barack Obama, who goes on to win the US presidency.

2009: Conservatives race toward victory in some of Europe’s largest economies as initial results and exit polls show voters punishing left-leaning parties in European Parliament elections in France, Germany and elsewhere.

2010: Egypt says it will leave its border with Gaza open indefinitely for humanitarian aid and restricted travel — after three years of cooperating in the Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territory.

2012: Two US officials testify at a court martial hearing that the State Department took extraordinary steps to limit harm to foreign relations and individuals, after an army private allegedly sent 250,000 classified diplomatic cables to the secret-sharing website WikiLeaks.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Alexander Pushkin, Russian writer (1799-1837); Paul Gauguin, French painter (1848-1903); Henry Lawson, Australian poet (1867-1922); Imre Nagy, Hungarian premier (1896-1958); Tom Jones, Welsh-born pop singer (1940- ); Poet Gwendolyn Brooks, African American poet (1949); Liam Neeson, actor (1952- ); Orhan Pamuk, Turkish writer (1952- ); William Forsythe, US actor (1955- ); Prince, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (1958-2016); Dave Navarro, rock guitarist (1967- ); Edward “Bear” Grylls, British adventurer, author and TV presenter for Man vs. Wild (1974- ); Allen Iverson, NBA guard for Philadelphia 76ers (1975- ); Anne McClain, American army officer and NASA astronaut on Soyuz MS-11 (1979-); Jordan Fry, American actor in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1993- ).

— AP