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Today is the 260th day of 2021. There are 105 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2004: Mexico’s President Vicente Fox and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi sign a free trade agreement to ease Mexico’s reliance on the US while encouraging Japan to move factories there.
OTHER EVENTS
1595: Pope Clement VII absolves Henry VI, a former Protestant, and recognises him as King of France.
1631: Swedish-Saxon army under Gustav II Adolf of Sweden destroys the Catholic army at Breitenfeld, Germany, marking the rise of Sweden as a major power.
1665: Bubonic plague breaks out in London.
1730: Ahmet XII is deposed, and is succeeded by Mahmoud I in Turkey.
1787: US Constitution is signed by a majority of delegates attending the constitutional convention in Philadelphia.
1862: Union forces fight a Confederate invasion in Maryland in the American Civil War Battle of Antietam. There were 23,100 killed, wounded or captured, making it the bloodiest day in US military history.
1900: Proclamation of Commonwealth of Australia as Federal Union of the Six Colonies.
1935: Manuel Quezon is elected first president of the Philippine Commonwealth.
1939: The Soviet Union invades Poland, more than two weeks after Nazi Germany launched its assault.
1944: The Battle of Arnhem begins with an Allied airborne landing in the Netherlands.
1948: Sweden’s Count Folke Bernadotte, United Nations mediator in Arab-Israeli conflict over Palestine, is slain near Jerusalem by Jewish terrorists.
1957: Troops led by Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, Thai Army commander-in-chief, seize control of the Government of Thailand and oust Premier Pibul Songgram in a bloodless coup.
1964: United States discloses development of two weapons systems capable of intercepting and destroying armed satellites circling the earth. The James Bond movie Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery, premieres in London. The fantasy sitcom Bewitched , starring Elizabeth Montgomery, debuts on ABC-TV.
1967: A riot during a soccer game in Turkey kills 42 people and injures 600 others.
1970: Open warfare erupts in Jordan between King Hussein’s army and Palestinian guerrillas, precipitating world crisis.
1971: Citing health reasons, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, 85, retires. (Black, who was succeeded by Lewis F Powell Jr, dies eight days after making his announcement.)
1978: Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign an agreement for Middle East peace at Camp David, United States.
1980: Exiled Nicaraguan leader Anastasio Somoza is assassinated in an explosion that wrecks his car in Asuncion, Paraguay.
1987: The city of Philadelphia, birthplace of the US Constitution, throws a big party to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the historic document; in a speech at Independence Hall, President Ronald Reagan acclaims the framing of the constitution as a milestone “that would profoundly and forever alter not just these United States but the world”.
1993: The body of General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the premier of Poland’s government-in-exile and commander of the Polish free forces during World War II, is reburied in Krakow. He died in an air crash in Gibraltar in 1943.
1996: US President Bill Clinton dispatches 3,500 Army soldiers to Kuwait and warns Iraq of new attacks should it threaten neighbouring countries or US forces.
1999: US President Bill Clinton lifts restrictions on trade, travel and banking, imposed on North Korea a half-century earlier, rewarding it for agreeing to curb missile tests.
2001: Six days after 9/11, stock prices nosedive but stop short of collapse in an emotional, flag-waving reopening of Wall Street; the Dow Jones industrial average ends the day down 684.81 at 8,920.70.
2003: Colombian officials sign a non-extradition pact covering US citizens sought by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands.
2008: US Defence Secretary Robert Gates meets with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and offers the people of Afghanistan his “personal regrets” for US air strikes that killed civilians and said he would try to improve the accuracy of air warfare. An assault on the US Embassy in San’a, Yemen, kills 19 people, including an American woman and six militants.
2009: US President Barack Obama abruptly cancels a long-planned missile shield for Eastern Europe, replacing a Bush-era project that was bitterly opposed by Russia with a plan he contends will better defend against a growing threat of Iranian missiles.
2011: A demonstration calling itself Occupy Wall Street begins in New York, prompting similar protests around the US and the world.
2012: Iran’s nuclear chief says that “terrorists and saboteurs” might have infiltrated the International Atomic Energy Agency in an effort to derail his nation’s atomic programme in Tehran’s harshest attack on the integrity of the UN agency that is investigating allegations that Iran is striving to make nuclear arms.
2013: Russia insists that a UN Security Council resolution governing Syria’s handling of its chemical weapons does not allow the use of force but suggests that could change if Damascus reneges on the deal to give up its stockpile. Engineers declare success as the Costa Concordia cruise ship is pulled completely upright during an unprecedented, 19-hour operation to wrench it from its side where it had capsized off Tuscany in 2012. Eiji Toyoda (cq), 100, a member of Toyota’s founding family who helped create the super-efficient “Toyota Way” production method, dies in Toyota city, Japan.
2014: Iraq’s new prime minister rules out stationing US ground troops in his country, chiding the international community for inaction in Syria and lamenting the “puzzling” exclusion of Iran from the coalition being assembled to fight Iran.
2017: British authorities say a second suspect is in custody in connection with the bomb that partially exploded two days earlier on a packed London subway. The top series prizes at the Emmy Awards go to The Handmaid’s Tale, Veep and the ever-topical Saturday Night Live; the ceremony took almost nonstop aim at US President Donald Trump in awards and speeches.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Marie-Jean Caritat, French philosopher (1743-1794); Sir Francis Chichester, British sailor (1901-1972); Hank Williams, US musician (1923-1953); Anne Bancroft, US actress (1931-2005); Ken Kesey, US author (1935-2001); John Ritter, US actor (1948-2003); Baz Luhrmann, Australian director (1962- )
— AP
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