Today is the 279th day of 2020. There are 87 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1947: In the first televised White House address, US President Harry S Truman asks Americans to refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Thursdays to help stockpile grain for starving people in Europe.

OTHER EVENTS

1795: Artillery commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte shoots down rebels marching against the National Convention in Paris, saving the republic. He is soon appointed commander of the army of the interior.

1796: Spain declares war on Britain.

1829: The 21st president of the United States, Chester Alan Arthur, is born in North Fairfield, Vermont.

1892: The Dalton Gang, notorious for its train robberies, is practically wiped out while attempting to rob a pair of banks in Coffeyville, Kansas.

1897: Brazil’s army crushes the rebel forces of messianic leader Antonio Conselheiro and razes the communist-style settlement of Canudos in the north-eastern outback.

1908: Ferdinand I declares Bulgaria’s independence from the Ottoman Empire and assumes title of czar of Bulgaria.

1931: Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon complete the first non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean, arriving in Washington state some 41 hours after leaving Japan.

1941: Former Supreme Court Justice Louis D Brandeis, the first Jewish member of the nation’s highest court, dies in Washington at age 84.

1953: Earl Warren is sworn in as the 14th chief justice of the United States, succeeding Fred M Vinson.

1954: Britain, United States, Italy and Yugoslavia agree that Free Territory of Trieste should be divided into Italian and Yugoslav zones.

1962: The Beatles’ first hit, Love Me Do, is released in Britain.

1965: Pakistan severs diplomatic relations with Malaysia on grounds that Malaysia showed partiality in the Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir.

1969: The British TV comedy programme Monty Python’s Flying Circus makes its debut on BBC 1.

1970: Egypt’s only political party names Anwar Sadat to succeed late President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

1974: The Irish Republican Army bombs two pubs in Guildford, Surrey, England, resulting in five deaths and dozens of injuries. (Four men who became known as the Guildford Four were convicted of the bombings but were ultimately vindicated.)

1978: US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance travels to South Africa to promote transition to black rule in Namibia.

1981: Former Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is posthumously granted honorary US citizenship for his humanitarian actions during World War II.

1983: Lech Walesa, leader of Poland’s Solidarity labour movement, is named winner of Nobel Peace Prize.

1984: The space shuttle Challenger blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center on an eight-day mission; the crew included Kathryn D Sullivan, who becomes the first American woman to walk in space, and Marc Garneau, the first Canadian astronaut.

1987: South Africa’s President P W Botha says his Government plans to permit some multiracial neighbourhoods.

1988: Chileans in a plebiscite turn down a proposal to extend General Augusto Pinochet’s rule until 1997. Democrat Lloyd Bentsen lambasts Republican Dan Quayle during their vice-presidential debate, telling Quayle, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

1989: The Dalai Lama wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1990: A jury in Cincinnati acquits an art gallery and its director of obscenity charges stemming from an exhibit of sexually graphic photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe.

1991: Fighting erupts between Iraqi soldiers and Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq, in the second outbreak of violence between the two sides since the withdrawal of US and allied forces in July.

1993: China breaks moratorium on nuclear testing.

1994: Forty-eight bodies are found in two locations in Switzerland after a cult’s mass suicide-murder.

1996: Bosnia’s three-member presidency gets off to a rocky start as the Serb member refuses to attend the inauguration.

1998: A committee of the US Congress votes to recommend an impeachment inquiry of President Bill Clinton’s actions in the case involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

1999: Two packed commuter trains collide near London’s Paddington Station, killing 31 people.

2006: European Union ministers endorse a plan to make permanent joint patrols that pick up migrants on the high seas, moving to end internal divisions over dealing with a surge of illegal immigration from Africa.

2008: President George W Bush defends his Administration’s methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects, saying both were successful and lawful. Topps Meat Co says it is closing its business, six days after it was forced to issue a massive beef recall. Track star Marion Jones pleads guilty in White Plains, New York, to lying to federal investigators when she denied using performance-enhancing drugs, and announces her retirement after the hearing.

2010: Former French trader Jerome Kerviel is convicted on all counts in history’s biggest rogue trading scandal, sentenced to at least three years in prison and ordered to pay his former employer damages of euro 4.9 billion (US$6.7 billion) — a sum so staggering it drew gasps in the courtroom.

2011: The New York Police Department’s intelligence squad secretly assigns an undercover officer to monitor a prominent Muslim leader even as he decried terrorism, cooperated with the police and dined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Apple founder Steve Jobs, 56, dies in Palo Alto, California.

2013: A month before the presidential election, the Labor Department reported that unemployment fell in September 2012 to its lowest level, 7.8 per cent, since President Barack Obama took office; some Republicans question whether the numbers have been manipulated

2017: Portugal’s former Prime Minister Antonio Guterres wins the Security Council’s unanimous backing to become the next UN secretary general, succeeding Ban Ki-moon. Frenchman Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Scottish-born Fraser Stoddart and Dutch scientist Bernard “Ben” Feringa win the Nobel Prize in chemistry for making devices the size of molecules.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Robert Goddard, US inventor of modern rocket (1882-1945); Glynis Johns, South African-born actress (1923- ); Diane Cilento, Australian actress (1933-2011); Vaclav Havel, Czech politician, playwright and former dissident (1936-2011); Bob Geldof, British singer (1954-); Kate Winslet, British actress (1975-)

— AP