Today is the 46th day of 2019. There are 319 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1964: Cassius Clay —who changed his name to Muhammad Ali — becomes the world’s heavyweight boxing champion.

OTHER EVENTS

1677: England’s King Charles II announces he has made an alliance with the Dutch against France.

1879: US President Rutherford Hayes signs a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court.

1894: France and Germany reach agreement on boundaries between French Congo and Cameroon.

1933: US President-elect Franklin Roosevelt escapes an assassination attempt in Miami that claims the life of Chicago Mayor Anton J Cermak.

1942: The British surrender the colony of Singapore to Japanese forces in World War II.

1944: US troops complete reconquest of Solomon Islands in Pacific Ocean in World War II. Nearly 1,000 British bombers pound Berlin, Germany.

1965: China’s Foreign Minister Chen Yi says in Beijing that peaceful coexistence with United States is out of the question.

1970: An Israeli oil pipeline is opened linking Eilat to Ashkelon.

1973: The United States and Cuba sign agreement calling for prosecution or extradition of hijackers of aeroplanes and ships.

1989: The last Soviet soldier leaves Afghanistan after a 10-year occupation.

1990: Britain and Argentina restore diplomatic relations, broken off during the 1982 Falkland Islands War.

1991: The South African Government announces it will free all political prisoners and African National Congress agrees to end armed struggle against apartheid.

1995: A fire roars through a three-storey nightclub in Taichung, Taiwan, killing at least 67 people and injuring 11 in Taiwan’s deadliest fire on record.

1996: Police deactivate a bomb in central London hours after the Irish Republican Army refused to rule out further attacks.

1997: In Kigali, Rwanda, three uniformed gunmen kill a Supreme Court justice, his driver and a neighbour in an attack on his home.

1998: Nineteen explosions blamed on radical Muslim groups rock Coimbatore, India, over two days, killing at least 56 people.

1999: Abdullah Ocalan, a Kurdish rebel leader, is captured by Turkish commandos in Kenya, where he had sought refuge at the Greek Embassy. He is taken to Turkey to stand trial.

2008: Czech President Vaclav Klaus, 66, wins a second five-year term when lawmakers chose him over a University of Michigan economics professor.

2009: President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela wins a referendum to eliminate term limits, paving the way for him to run again in 2012.

2011: Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi is ordered to stand trial on charges he paid a 17-year-old Moroccan girl for sex and then used his influence to cover it up — an offence that, if proven, could see him barred permanently from public office.

2012: A fire started by an inmate tore through an overcrowded prison in Honduras, burning and suffocating screaming men in their locked cells as rescuers desperately searched for keys. As many as 300 people are killed in the world’s deadliest prison fire in eight decades.

2013: With a blinding flash and a booming shock wave, a meteor blazes across Russia’s western Siberian sky and explodes, injuring more than 1,000 people as it blasted out windows.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer (1564-1642); Babur, founder of Mughal dynasty in India (1483-1530); A N Whitehead, English philosopher (1861-1947); Hank Locklin, US country singer (1918-2009); Jane Seymour, English born actress (1951- ); Melissa Manchester, US singer (1951- ); Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons (1954- )

— AP