Today is the 306th day of 2017. There are 59 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1930: Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia.

OTHER EVENTS

1483: The Duke of Buckingham is executed after leading a failed rebellion against King Richard III of England, whom he helped to the throne four months earlier.

1687: Ottoman ruler Mohammed IV is deposed in revolution in Constantinople and is succeeded by Suleiman III.

1783: General George Washington issues his “Farewell Address to the Army” near Princeton, New Jersey.

1841: The Second Afghan War starts when Afghans massacre British army officers.

1917: In the Balfour Declaration, the British Government declares that it favours the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

1947: Howard Hughes pilots his huge wooden aeroplane, known as the Spruce Goose, on its only flight, which lasts about a minute over Long Beach Harbour in California.

1951: Bolivia receives a US$1 million US Export-Import Bank loan to expand production of tungsten to be sold to the US.

1956: Gaza, Egypt falls to British in Suez War; Hungarian government renounces Warsaw Treaty and appeals to the United Nations against Soviet invasion.

1959: Charles Van Doren admits to a US House subcommittee that he had the questions and answers in advance for his appearances on the NBC-TV game show Twenty-One.

1962: US President John F Kennedy announces an end to the Cuban missile crisis, saying the Soviet Union is dismantling bases in Cuba.

1963: South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated by his own troops during a coup.

1964: King Saud of Saudi Arabia is deposed, and Faisal is proclaimed king.

1967: White mercenaries and black troops invade Congo from Portuguese Angola.

1972: Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter defeats Republican incumbent Gerald R Ford, becoming the first US president from the Deep South since the Civil War.

1978: Two Soviet cosmonauts who established a new endurance record by staying in space 139 days and 15 hours land safely in Kazakhstan.

1983: US President Ronald Reagan signs a Bill establishing a federal holiday on the third Monday of January in honour of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

1988: Government imposes nationwide night curfew in Sri Lanka after attacks by radical Sinhalese leave at least 16 people dead. The group opposes an accord that would grant a measure of autonomy to Tamils if the guerrillas lay down their arms.

1990: Militiamen in the Soviet republic of Moldavia shoot and kill six people and wound 30 during an ethnic clash.

1991: Yugoslav army renews attacks on Croatia.

1992: Basketball star Magic Johnson retires for a second time from the Los Angeles Lakers, just five weeks after the guard, who has HIV, announced he would return to the NBA.

1993: Sarajevo shivers in frigid temperatures as Bosnian Serbs block United Nations engineering crews from repairing vital electrical lines.

1994: A river of fire ignited by an oil tank explosion surges through a village in southern Egypt, killing more than 410 people.

1995: Suicide attackers set off back-to-back car bombs near Israeli buses in the Gaza Strip, injuring 11 Israelis in apparent retaliation for the slaying of a radical.

1996: A United States Air Force F-16 fighter plane fires a missile at an Iraqi radar site while in the “no-fly” zone over southern Iraq.

1998: Chaos and looting erupts in Central America after Hurricane Mitch, which killed more than 7,000.

1999: Prominent Zulu prince Cyril Zulu, the mayor-designate of Durban, South Africa is assassinated by an unknown gunman.

2000: One American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts move into Alpha, an international space station, for a four-month stay.

2001: Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Protestant Government faces imminent suspension or collapse after two Protestant lawmakers refuse to support their leader, David Trimble’s re-election bid as government leader.

2002: US President George W Bush calls Saddam Hussein a “dangerous man” with links to terrorist networks, as UN Security Council members await a revised US resolution to disarm Iraq.

2003: The US Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire installs as its bishop Reverend V Gene Robinson, consecrating the first openly homosexual Anglican bishop and drawing censure from numerous provinces within the worldwide Anglican Communion.

2004: A film-maker who was the great-grandnephew of Vincent van Gogh is slain in a daylight attack, and police arrest a Dutch-Moroccan man after wounding him in a shootout. Theo van Gogh made a movie criticising the treatment of Muslim women.

2005: Clashes between police and protesters in Ethiopia’s capital erupt in gunfire and grenade explosions, with police killing at least 33 people during a second day of renewed demonstrations against disputed elections.

2006: Iran test-fires dozens of missiles, including the Shahab-3 that can reach Israel, in military manoeuvres that it says are aimed at putting a stop to the role of world powers in the Persian Gulf region.

2007: Morocco recalls its ambassador from Spain after King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia announce plans to visit two Spanish enclaves in North Africa. Morocco’s claim to them is a consistent sore spot in bilateral relations.

2008: Hundreds of people march through Belarus’ capital to remember the victims of Stalinist purges and call for an end to repression in a country that still has many of the trappings of the former Soviet Union.

2009: US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton moderates her praise for Israel’s offer to restrain building settlements in Palestinian areas n the face of Arab criticism of the administration’s recalibrated Mideast peace tack.

2010: Britain and France strike a historic defence deal aimed at preserving military muscle in an age of austerity, pledging to deploy troops under a single command, share aircraft carriers and collaborate on once fiercely guarded nuclear programmes.

2011: Greece’s prime minister goes to the French resort of Cannes to explain to his furious European colleagues why he is holding a surprise referendum on a bailout deal that took them all months to work out.

2012: A video that appears to show a unit of Syrian rebels kicking terrified, captured soldiers and then executing them with machine guns raises concerns about rebel brutality at a time when the United States is pushing to forge an opposition movement it can work with.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Marie Antoinette, wife of France’s King Louis XVI (1755-1793); Luchino Visconti, Italian film director (1906-1976); Odysseus Elytis, pseud of Odysseus Alepoudelis, Greek poet and Nobel laureate (1911-1996); Burt Lancaster, US actor (1913-1994); David Schwimmer, US actor (1966- ); K D Lang, Canadian singer (1961- )