This is the 312th day of 2022. There are 53 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2005: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is elected president of Liberia, the first woman to lead an African country

OTHER EVENTS

392: Roman Emperor Theodosius declares Christianity the religion of the State.

1519: Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés reaches Mexico City with his small Spanish force and 1,000 Tlaxcaltec allies; the Aztecs, believing he is an incarnation of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, receive him with great honour for his first meeting of Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II.

1520: Swedes loyal to Denmark’s King Christian II execute over 80 political opponents in the central square in “The bloodbath of Stockholm”.

1602: The Bodleian Library at Oxford University opens.

1793: The Louvre Museum in Paris opens to the public.

1837: One of the first institutions of higher education for women in the United States, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) opens in Massachusetts.

1892: Former US President Grover Cleveland beats incumbent Benjamin Harrison and becomes the first US president to win non-consecutive terms in the White House.

1895: German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen produces and detects electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range that is today known as an X-ray or Röntgen ray.

1917: Vladimir I Lenin becomes chief commissar in Russia and Leon Trotsky is named premier.

1923: Adolf Hitler and Erich Ludendorff stage an unsuccessful coup in Munich, Germany, against the Weimar Republic that comes to be known as the Beer-Hall Putsch.; it is suppressed the following day.

1932: New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected US president.

1956: Comet Arend-Roland is discovered; it is remarkable for its anomalous second tail which projects toward rather than away from the sun.

1960: Massachusetts Senator John F Kennedy defeats Vice-President Richard M Nixon for the US presidency.

1966: Edward W Brooke of Massachusetts becomes the first black man to be elected to the US Senate by popular vote.

1968: Cynthia Lennon is granted a divorce from The Beatles member John Lennon.

1970: American The Mamas & the Papas singer Michelle Phillips, at 26, divorces American Easy Rider director and actor Dennis Hopper , age 34, after only eight 8 days of marriage.

1972: The American cable television company HBO officially debuts as it airs the 1971 film Sometimes a Great Notion, which starred Paul Newman.

1974: A federal judge in Cleveland dismisses charges against eight Ohio National Guardsmen accused of violating the civil rights of students who were killed or wounded in the 1970 Kent State shootings. British peer, the Earl of Lucan, disappears and is never seen again after his nanny is found murdered in London.

1975 NBA legend Larry Bird, at 18, weds high school sweetheart Janet Condra

1987: Eleven people are killed when an Irish Republican Army bomb explodes as crowds gather in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, for a ceremony honouring Britain’s war dead.

1989: Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega offers to end arms imports to his country in exchange for the demobilisation of the Contra rebels.

1990: US President George Bush orders 200,000 more US troops to the Gulf; the United States readies a United Nations resolution that will authorise an attack on Iraq.

1991: The European Community and Canada impose economic sanctions on Yugoslavia in an attempt to stop the Balkan civil war.

1992: US Senator Bob Dole calls for an investigation into the action of the Iran-contra special prosecutor’s office in connection with the indictment of former Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who was charged with making false statements to Congress.

1993: Russian President Boris Yeltsin approves a draft constitution that will give him increased powers at the Parliament’s expense.

1996: United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali calls for an international military force to aid and protect a million refugees caught in a civil war in Zaire, but is blocked by the United States in the Security Council.

1994: France arrests 95 people in its biggest sweep against Islamic militants.

1997: Chinese engineers divert the Yangtze River from its natural course, clearing way for the construction of the enormous Three Gorges dam.

1998: In Bangladesh 15 former military commanders are sentenced to death for the 1975 assassination of the country’s first prime minister.

1999: Israel’s national airline graduates its first Arab flight attendant in nearly a decade, several months after it came under attack for discriminating against Arabs. Tenor Andrea Bocelli releases his Sacred Arias album, the world’s best-selling classical album by a single artist.

2000: Fusako Shigenobu, a Japanese revolutionary responsible for terrorist massacres in Israel and Italy, is arrested in Japan after decades on the run.

2001: The discovery of eight remains — five skeletons and the partially clad bodies of three young women — in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, ignites fear that a series of 57 rape-murders did not end in the 1990s.

2005: France declares a state of emergency after nearly two weeks of rioting, clearing the way for curfews in hopes of ending the country’s worst civil unrest in more than 50 years; its prime minister acknowledges that racial discrimination has inflamed tempers in the heavily immigrant suburbs.

2007: Russia’s Supreme Court refuses to recognise the executed last czar, Nicholas II, and his family as victims of political repression — a ruling Kremlin critics say is dictated by the Government’s reluctance to condemn the bloodiest chapters of the country’s communist past.

2013: The Philippines endure what many consider its worst natural disaster when the country is struck by Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful cyclones ever recorded to strike land.

2016: Despite trailing in most polls, Republican Donald Trump is elected the 45th president of the United States though his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million — an astonishing victory for a celebrity businessman and political novice; Republicans maintain their majorities in the Senate and House.

2017: Brazilian surfer Rodrigo Koxa breaks the world record for surfing the biggest-ever wave at 24.4m at Nazaré, Portugal

2020: Canadian-born American television personality Alex Trebek, who was best known as the host (1984–2020) of the TV game show Jeopardy!, dies at age 80.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Edmund Halley, British astronomer (1656-1742); John Milton, English poet (1608-1674); Hermann Rorschach, Swiss psychiatrist (1884-1922); Margaret Mitchell, US author (1900-1949); Katharine Hepburn, US actress (1907-2003); Alain Delon, French actor (1932- ); Bonnie Raitt American musician (1949- ); Mary Hart, US television host (1950- ); Gordon Ramsay, Scottish chef and restaurateur (1966- ); Parker Posey, US actress (1968- )

— AP