Today is the 41st day of 2023. There are 324 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2009: US and Russian communication satellites collide in the first-ever crash of its kind in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds.

OTHER EVENTS

1763: France cedes Canada and India to England as Treaty of Paris is signed, ending French and Indian War.

1817: Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia agree to first reduction of occupation forces in France.

1828: Simon Bolivar, South American revolutionary, becomes ruler of Colombia.

1846: British forces under Hugh Gough defeat Sikhs at Sobrahan, India.

1878: By Convention of El Zanjou, ending Ten Years’ War, Spain promises reforms in Cuba.

1933: The first singing telegram is sung in the United States.

1939: Japanese forces occupy Hainan Island, China.

1943: Britain’s Eighth Army reaches Tunisian border in World War II.

1961: United States relinquishes rights to many defence bases in West Indies.

1962: The Soviet Union exchanges captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Rudolph Ivanovich Abel, a Soviet spy held by the United States.

1964: Royal Australian Navy destroyer Voyager sinks after collision with HMAS Melbourne off Jervis Bay; more than 80 die.

1969: United States, Britain and France reject East German restrictions on travel to West Berlin, and remind Soviets of their responsibility to ensure free access.

1974: Iraq claims that 70 Iranians were killed or wounded in border clash between Iraqi and Iranian troops.

1991: Peruvian health ministry announces that at least 51 people have died of cholera in epidemic along that country’s coast.

1993: Six million people in Madagascar vote in elections that topple President Didier Ratsiraka after 17 years in office.

1994: The worst of the Bosnian war is over for the battered city of Sarajevo, where a UN-brokered ceasefire goes into effect.

1995: Mexican Government troops raid the headquarters of the Zapatista rebels in the jungles of Chiapas State, but fail to catch leader Subcomandante Marcos.

1996: A slab of mountainside crushes a highway tunnel, killing 20 people in vehicles on the Japanese island of Hokkaido.

1997: Croats open fire on Muslims visiting a cemetery in the southern Bosnian city of Mostar, killing at least one and wounding 39 people.

1998: Protestant leaders seek to exclude Sinn Fein from Northern Ireland peace talks after a killing blamed on Catholic guerrillas.

2000: All 164 passengers held hostage on an Afghan airliner during a tense four-day journey across Central Asia and Europe, exit the plane in England.

2002: Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships attack a Palestinian National Authority security compound and other targets in Gaza City, wounding more than 30 people.

2007: General David Petraeus takes command of US and multinational troops in Iraq, succeeding General George W Casey Jr.

2008: A US Army sniper accused of killing an unarmed Iraqi civilian and planting evidence on his body to cover it up is found guilty on all charges.

2009: US and Russian communication satellites collide in the first-ever crash of its kind in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds.

2010: Iraq orders hundreds of private security guards linked to Blackwater Worldwide to leave the country within seven days or face possible arrest on visa violations.

2011: Embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hands over power to his vice-president, promising reforms including repeal of hated emergency laws, but his concession angers crowds in Cairo’s Tahrir Square who chant “get out!”

2012: Greece’s future in the eurozone grows increasingly precarious as violence erupts on the streets of Athens and dissent increases among its lawmakers after European leaders demand deeper spending cuts.

2013: Marine General Joseph Dunford takes charge of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan as the coalition enters its final stretch of the more than 11-year-old war.

2014: An instructor for the al-Qaeda breakaway group in Iraq teaching his militant recruits how to make car bombs accidentally sets off explosives in his demonstration, killing 21 of them at a training camp north of Baghdad.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

William Congreve, English dramatist (1670-1729); Boris Pasternak, Soviet writer (1890-1960); Leontyne Price, US soprano (1927- ); Robert Wagner, US actor (1930- ); Roberta Flack, US singer (1937-); Greg Norman, Australian golfer (1955-)

— AP