Today is the 361st day of 2018. There are 4 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1985: Terrorists strike at holiday travellers in simultaneous attacks on Israel’s El Al airline at Rome and Vienna airports, killing 16 people and wounding more than 100.

OTHER EVENTS

1741: Prussian forces take Olmutz, Czechoslovakia; Spanish troops land in Tuscany, Italy.

1794: French troops invade Holland.

1831: Naturalist Charles Darwin sets out on a voyage to the Pacific aboard the HMS Beagle. His discoveries during the voyage helped form the basis of his theories on evolution.

1927: Joseph Stalin’s faction wins at All-Union Congress in Soviet Union, and Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Communist Party.

1932: Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City.

1944: In World War II, Soviet forces surround Budapest; US forces smash across the German Bulge in Belgium and relieve US troops under siege at Bastogne.

1945: Foreign ministers of Britain, United States and Soviet Union meet in Moscow and call for provisional democratic government in Korea; the World Bank is created with an agreement signed by 28 nations.

1949: The Netherlands’ Queen Juliana grants Indonesia sovereignty after more than three centuries of Dutch rule.

1956: United Nations fleet begins clearing the Suez Canal after the Suez War.

1964: Congo Government charges that officers from Algeria and the United Arab Republic are leading Congolese rebels on Congo’s north-eastern border.

1969: Libya, Sudan and United Arab Republic (the short-lived union of Egypt and Syria) announce political, economic and military agreement in Tripoli.

1970: The musical, Hello, Dolly! closes on Broadway after a run of 2,844 performances.

1972: Australia halts military aid to South Vietnam, ending its involvement in the Vietnam War.

1979: Soviet forces seize control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, is replaced by Babrak Karmal.

1985: American naturalist Dian Fossey, who studied gorillas in the wild, is found hacked to death at a research station in Rwanda.

1987: Ferocious gun battle erupts in crowded market in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka, after suspected separatist Tamil rebels fatally shoot policeman. At least 25 people are reported killed.

1989: US soldiers blast rock music and news bulletins about Panama at Vatican embassy in Panama City in attempt to drive General Manuel Noriega from refuge there.

1990: After being recalled days earlier, Iraq’s ambassadors return to their posts calling for “serious and constructive dialogue” on Persian Gulf crisis.

1992: The United States shoots down an Iraqi fighter aircraft when two Iraqi warplanes “turned to confront” US F-16 jets in United Nations-restricted airspace over southern Iraq.

1994: Suspected Muslim militants in Algiers kill four Catholic priests.

1996: Some 60,000 jubilant opposition supporters defy riot police to rally in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, buoyed by international mediators who upheld their victory over President Slobodan Milosevic in local elections.

1997: Billy Wright, one of the most feared Protestant guerrilla leaders in Northern Ireland, is shot and killed in prison by inmates belonging to an Irish Republican Army splinter group.

1999: Alfonso Portillo of the right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front wins the country’s first peacetime presidential election in nearly 40 years.

2000: Animal rights activists toss eggs and jeer as hunters and hounds pursue foxes across a frigid British countryside in traditional post-Christmas hunts.

2002: Three unidentified men driving a heavy military truck penetrate the defences surrounding the pro-Russian Government’s headquarters in Grozny, capital of Chechnya, and detonate more than a ton of explosives, killing 63 people and injuring 178.

2005: Israeli aircraft fire missiles on two offices of the militant Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and an overpass the army says militants cross to reach launching grounds for rocket attacks.

2006: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules state lawmakers cannot be compelled to vote on a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage.

2007: Pakistan Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, 54, is killed by an attacker who shot her after a campaign rally and then blew himself up. The Government later says she died from a skull fracture suffered when her head slammed against her car. At least 20 others are also killed.

2008: International aid agencies warn that Zimbabwe’s humanitarian crisis is deepening, with a sharp rise in acute child malnutrition and a worsening cholera epidemic.

2009: A Nigerian man’s claim that his attempt to blow up a US plane originated with al-Qaeda’s network inside Yemen deepens concerns that instability in the Middle Eastern country is providing the terror group with a base to train and recruit militants for operations against the West and the US.

2010: Corruption charges against one of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s most trusted political advisers provide the latest evidence of deep rifts within the Iranian president’s own conservative political camp.

2011: Surprised airport workers in Argentina find hundreds of wriggling poisonous snakes and endangered reptiles inside the baggage of a Czech man who was about to board a flight to Spain.

2012: Mexico City’s Government tries to transform one of the world’s largest cities by beautifying public spaces, parks and monuments buried beneath a sea of honking cars, street hawkers and grime following decades of dizzying urban growth.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Johannes Kepler, German astronomer (1571-1630); Louis Pasteur, French scientist (1822-1895); Louis Bromfield, US novellist (1896-1956); Marlene Dietrich, German actress (1901-1992); John Amos, US actor (1939- ); Cokie Roberts, US newsperson (1943- ); Gerard Depardieu, French actor (1948- ); T S Monk, jazz drummer/vocalist (1949- ).