This Day in HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT 2009: US and Russian communication satellites collide in the first-ever crash of its kind in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds.

OTHER EVENTS

1763: France cedes Canada

and India to England as Treaty of Paris is signed, ending French and Indian War.

1811: Russians take Belgrade and capture Turkish army.

1828: Simon Bolivar, South American revolutionary, becomes ruler of Colombia.

1846: British forces under Hugh Gough defeat Sikhs at Sobrahan, India. 1878: By Convention of El Zanjou, ending Ten Years’ War, Spain promises reforms in Cuba. 1933: The first singing telegram is sung in the United

States.

1939: Japanese forces occupy Hainan Island, China.

1961: United States relinquishes rights to many defence bases in West Indies.

1969: United States, Britain, and France reject East German restrictions on travel to West Berlin, and remind Soviets of their responsibility to ensure free access.

1974: Iraq claims that 70 Iranians were killed or wounded in border clash between Iraqi and Iranian troops. American soprano Leontyne Price was born on this day, 1927. 1991: Peruvian health ministry announces that at least 51 people have died of cholera in epidemic along that country’s coast.

1993: Six million people in Madagascar vote in elections that topple President Didier Ratsiraka after 17 years in office.

1994: The worst of the Bosnian war is over for the battered city of Sarajevo, where a Un-brokered ceasefire goes into effect.

1995: Mexican Government troops raid the headquarters of the Zapatista rebels in the jungles of Chiapas state, but fail to catch leader Subcomandante Marcos.

1996: A slab of mountainside crushes a highway tunnel, killing 20 people in vehicles on the Japanese island of Hokkaido.

1997: Croats open fire on Muslims visiting a cemetery in the southern Bosnian city of Mostar, killing at least one and wounding 39 people.

1998: Protestant leaders seek to exclude Sinn Fein from Northern Ireland peace talks after a killing blamed on Catholic guerrillas.

2000: All 164 passengers held hostage on an Afghan airliner during a tense four-day journey across Central Asia and Europe exit the plane in England.

2001: Two dozen young antigovernment demonstrators are injured and 100 arrested in clashes with riot police breaking up a Tehran rally. Incidents in Tehran and other cities come as Iran marks the 22nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution.

2004: Us-backed, antinarcotics soldiers capture Nayibe Rojas, a female rebel commander who is believed to manage drug and financial operations for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, the nation’s largest guerrilla group. The army said Rojas is suspected of sending more than 600 tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe since 1994.

2005: North Korea boasts

publicly for the first time that it has nuclear weapons and says it will stay away from disarmament talks, dramatically raising the stakes in the two-year-old nuclear dispute despite softened rhetoric from the United States aimed at luring the communist nation back to the negotiating table.

2006: The United States suspends Australia’s wheatexport monopoly from US Government contracts and proposes an indefinite debarment for the monopoly’s cheating on the United Nations Oil-for-food Programme in Iraq.

2007: General David Petraeus takes command of US and multinational troops in Iraq, succeeding General George W Casey Jr.

2008: A US Army sniper accused of killing an unarmed Iraqi civilian and planting evidence on his body to cover it up is found guilty on all charges.

2009: US and Russian communication satellites collide in the first-ever crash of its kind in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds.

2010: Iraq orders hundreds of private security guards linked to Blackwater Worldwide to leave the country within seven days or face possible arrest on visa violations.

2011: Embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hands over power to his vice-president, promising reforms including repeal of hated emergency laws, but his concession angers crowds in Cairo’s Tahrir Square who chant “get out!”

2012: Veteran Jamaican journalist Wilmot “Motty” Perkins passes. Greece’s future in the eurozone grows increasingly precarious as violence erupts on the streets of Athens and dissent increases among its lawmakers after European leaders demand deeper spending cuts.

2013: Marine General Joseph Dunford takes charge of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan as the coalition enters its final stretch of the more than 11-year-old war.

2014: An instructor for the al-qaeda breakaway group in Iraq teaching his militant recruits how to make car bombs accidentally sets off explosives in his demonstration, killing 21 of them at a training camp north of Baghdad.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

William Congreve, English dramatist (1670-1729); Boris Pasternak, Soviet writer

(1890-1960); Leontyne Price, US soprano (1927- ); Robert Wagner, US actor (1930- ); Roberta Flack, US singer (1937- ); Greg Norman, Australian golfer (1955-)