Today is the 283rd day of 2022. There are 82 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2010: Churches, banquet halls and other wedding venues across the US are extra busy as couples seeking a perfect 10 rushed to tie the knot on a once-in-a-century milestone: October 10, 2010.

OTHER EVENTS

680: Hussein, one of Shiite Islam’s key saints, is killed at the Battle of Karbala in modern-day Iraq.

1733: France declares war on Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI for aiding Elector Augustus III of Saxony.

1842: Britain proclaims victory as the second Afghan War ends.

1845: The US Naval Academy opens in Annapolis, Maryland.

1859: Civil war breaks out in Argentina.

1886: The tuxedo dinner jacket makes its American debut at the Autumn Ball in Tuxedo Park, New York.

1911: Revolutionaries in Wuhan begin a revolt that spreads through southern China and leads to the overthrow of the 2,000-year-old Manchu dynasty.

1913: The Atlantic and Pacific oceans are united when the Gamboa Dam in the Panama Canal is blown up.

1917: Brazil declares war on Germany in retaliation for the torpedoing of Brazilian ships.

1938: Nazi Germany completes the annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland.

1943: Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek becomes president of China.

1957: Komla Agbeli Gbdemah, the finance minister of Ghana, receives an apology from US President Dwight D Eisenhower after the official is refused service in a Dover, Delaware, restaurant.

1961: The whole population of South Atlantic island Tristan da Cunha is evacuated to Britain after a volcano erupts.

1963: A high dam collapses near Belluno, Italy, and a resulting flood kills an estimated 1,800 people.

1964: The Tokyo Olympic Games, the first held in Asia, begin.

1970: Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte is kidnapped by the Quebec Liberation Front, a militant separatist group. His body is found a week later. Fiji becomes independent after nearly a century of British rule.

1973: US Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigns after his conviction for income tax evasion.

1975: The murder of journalist Vladimir Herzog in an army jail in Brazil causes indignation in the military high command and starts a gradual dismantling of the dictatorship.

1980: Thousands of casualties are reported following an earthquake in Al Asnan, Algeria.

1985: US jet fighters force an Egyptian airliner carrying hijackers of cruise ship Achille Lauro to land in Italy, where the hijackers are arrested.

1988: Suspected Tamil militants attack a village in northern Sri Lanka, killing at least 47 people as they sleep.

1990: The US freezes US$564 million in economic and military aid to Pakistan because of its suspected coninued development of nuclear weapons.

1991: German political leaders agree to establish large refugee camps to protect people seeking asylum. The agreement comes amid a continuing wave of violence led by neo-Nazi skinhead youth against foreigners in Germany.

1992: A court in Karachi, Pakistan, acquits Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, on charges of masterminding the murder of 29 rival political supporters.

1993: Socialist Andreas Papandreou returns to power in Greek elections.

1994: Haitian leader Lieutenant General Raoul Cedras resigns, paving the way for the return of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

1995: Israel releases about 300 Palestinian prisoners and hands a military government office to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in a fitful start to the West Bank autonomy agreement.

1996: Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers search house to house for anyone suspected of collaborating with the former regime, unleashing a wave of fear among ethnic minorities.

1997: A former senior FBI official is sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in covering up a damning report about the 1992 stand-off at white supremacist Randall C Weaver’s cabin near Ruby Ridge, Idaho, which resulted in three deaths.

1998: Rebels use a missile to shoot down a jetliner carrying 40 civilians in eastern Congo, claiming it was ferrying government troops to the besieged town of Kindu.

1999: Cuban President Fidel Castro agrees to an emigration deal with Israel where members of Cuba’s small Jewish minority are allowed to move to Israel using Canada-issued exit visas.

2000: Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who 40 years earlier became the world’s first female prime minister, dies of a heart attack in Colombo, Sri Lanka, after voting in parliamentary elections at the age of 84.

2001: Americans George A Akerlof, A Michael Spence, and Joseph E Stiglitz win the Nobel Prize in Economics for research into how the control of information influences everything from used car sales to the rise and collapse of high-tech stocks.

2002: The final results from legislative assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir state confirm that the National Conference party failed to win a majority after ruling the Himalayan region for most of the prior 50 years.

2003: US President Bush announces measures to increase US pressure on the Government of Cuban President Fidel Castro, including a crackdown on US tourists who visit Cuba illegally and the creation of a high-level task force to plan for a post-Castro Cuba.

2004: Afghans pack polling stations for a historic presidential election that is blemished when all 15 candidates opposing US-backed interim President Hamid Karzai withdraw, charging the Government and the United Nations with fraud and incompetence.

2005: General Augusto Pinochet’s wife and younger son are arrested in Chile’s capital and charged as accomplices in a tax evasion case linked to an investigation into the former dictator’s multimillion-dollar fortune overseas.

2006: Two bombs explode in insurgency-torn southern Philippines, killing six people and wounding more than 30, as officials heighten security amid warnings that al-Qaida-linked terrorists are planning further attacks.

2007: The Russian Soyuz-FG rocket booster, with the Soyuz TMA-11 spaceship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, lifts off from the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.

2008: Martti Ahtisaari, Finland’s ex-president, wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

2009: Legendary trumpeter and bandleader, Jamaican Cecil “Sonny” Bradshaw dies this day. Turkey and Armenia sign a landmark agreement to establish diplomatic relations and open their sealed border after a century of enmity, as US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton helps the two sides clear a last-minute snag.

2011: Egypt’s ruling military condemns a surge in deadly violence as an attempt to undermine the State, and warns it will act to safeguard the peace following a night of clashes that draws in Christians, Muslims and security forces.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer (1813-1901); Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian explorer (1861-1930); Ivo Andric, Yugoslav writer and Nobel laureate (1892-1975); Alberto Giacometti, Swiss artist (1901-1966); Thelonious Monk, US jazz musician (1917-1982); Harold Pinter, US writer/director (1930-2008), David Lee Roth, US singer (1954- ), Nora Roberts (aka J D Robb), US romance/mystery author (1950- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer