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Today is the 146th day of 2021. There are 219 days left in the year.
TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT
1966: British Guiana becomes independent nation of Guyana.
 
OTHER EVENTS
1521: Martin Luther is banned by the Edict of Worms (vohrms) because of his religious beliefs and writings.
1868: The US Senate impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson ends with his acquittal as the Senate is one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.
1924: US President Calvin Coolidge signs Bill limiting immigration into United States and completely excluding Japanese.
1940: Evacuation of British troops from France in the face of a German invasion begins at Dunkirk.
1942: German forces begin their drive for Stalingrad and the Caucasus in World War II.
1954: Funeral ship of Pharaoh Cheops is discovered in Egypt near the Pyramid of Giza.
1964: China rejects appeal by Britain to help halt fighting in Laos.
1969: The Apollo 10 astronauts return to Earth after a successful eight-day dress rehearsal for the first manned moon landing.
1977: George H Willig scales the outside of the South Tower of New York's World Trade Center; he is arrested at the top of the 110-storey building.
1979: Israel formally returns sovereignty of Sinai capital of El Arish to Egypt after a dozen years of occupation.
1981: A marine jet crashes onto the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off Florida, killing 14 people.
1987: Sri Lankan troops begin major offensive against Tamil separatist rebels in the northern Jaffna Peninsula.
1990: Boris Yeltsin fails to win a majority in balloting for Russian presidency.
1991: Austrian airliner bound for Vienna explodes and crashes into the jungle in Thailand, killing all 223 people on-board.
1992: Russia's Constitutional Court orders Mikhail Gorbachev, or a stand-in, to represent the Communist Party on its right to exist.
1993: The Supreme Court restores Pakistan's ousted Government, dealing a blow to Benazir Bhutto's dreams of a political comeback.
1994: US President Bill Clinton renews trade privileges for China, and announces his Administration would no longer link China's trade status with its human rights record.
1996: Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi opens a meeting of Opposition activists in Yangon, Myanmar, in defiance of the military Government, which arrests scores of people.
1999: Indian aircraft attack separatist guerrillas in the disputed Kashmir province, marking the first use of air power in the simmering conflict in 20 years. Pakistan threatens retaliation.
2001: The African Union replaces the 38-year-old Organization of African Unity. The move is meant to bring political and economic integration similar to the European Union for 53 African member nations.
2006: A Russian regional Supreme Court convicts Nur-Pashi Kulayev for 331 deaths in the Beslan school massacre in the southern province of North Ossetia and sentences him to life in prison. Kulayev was the only known surviving attacker.
2007: Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's long-dominant party, Fianna Fail, celebrates its sixth-straight election win.
2008: Ethiopia's Supreme Court sentences an exiled former president - dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam - and 18 officials to death for the thousands of people murdered during Mengistu's 17-year rule.
2009: President Barack Obama chooses federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic justice on the US Supreme Court.
2010: Jamaican security forces claim a tenuous hold over the slum stronghold of an at-large gang leader sought by the US, but only after nearly three days of street battles that kill at least 44 civilians.
2011: A pale and shrunken Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander, is hauled into a courtroom after 16 years on the run to face charges of genocide in ordering the torture, rape and the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.
2015: Challenging Hillary Rodham Clinton from the left, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders formally kicks off his Democratic presidential bid in Burlington, Vermont, with a pitch to liberals to join him in a "political revolution" to transform the nation's economy and politics.
 
TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS
John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, English general (1650-1722); Isadora Duncan, US dancer (1877-1927); Al Jolson, US singer/actor (1886-1950); Alexander Pushkin, Russian writer (1799-1837); John Wayne, US actor (1907-1979); Hank Williams Jr, US country singer (1949- ); Lenny Kravitz, US rock singer (1964- ); Helena Bonham Carter, British actress (1966- ); Joseph Fiennes, British actor (1970- ); Lloyd Parks, leader, vocalist and bass layer of Lloyd Parks and We The People band (1948- ).
- AP