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Today is the 176th day of 2021. There are 189 days left in the year.
TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT
2009: Michael Jackson, the "King of Pop" who emerged from childhood superstardom to become the entertainment world's most influential singer and dancer before his life and career deteriorated in a series of scandals, dies at 50.
 
OTHER EVENTS
1658: Aurangzeb, Mogul emperor of Hindustan, imprisons his father, the shah, after winning battle of Samgarh.
1868: Congress passes an Omnibus Act allowing for the re-admission of Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina to the Union.
1876: A force of 200 US soldiers under General George Armstrong Custer is wiped out by the Sioux at Little Big Horn, Montana.
1910: US President William Howard Taft signs the White-Slave Traffic Act, more popularly known as the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for "immoral" purposes.
1942: British Royal Air Force stages 1,000-bomber raid on Bremen, Germany, in World War II.
1947: The Diary of a Young Girl, the personal journal of Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl hiding with her family from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II, is first published.
1950: Korean War begins with North Korea's invasion of the Republic of Korea.
1972: Burundi Government reportedly continues to execute Hutu tribe members, and about 25,000 Hutu refugees are reported fleeing to other countries.
1973: Former White House Counsel John W Dean begins testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, implicating top Administration officials, including President Richard Nixon as well as himself, in the Watergate scandal and cover-up.
1981: The US Supreme Court rules that male-only draft registration is constitutional.
1987: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev calls for sweeping changes in economy of USSR before year's end.
1993: Kim Campbell is sworn in as Canada's 19th prime minister, the first woman to hold the post.
1997: In the most serious collision involving manned spacecraft, an unmanned cargo vessel smashes into Russian Mir space station during docking, rupturing a laboratory module and knocking out half the station's power.
1998: South Korean commandos cut open the hatch of a North Korean submarine they captured and find the crew of nine shot to death in an apparent suicide pact. Suspicion focuses on spying activities. The US Supreme Court rejects a line-item veto law as unconstitutional, and rules that HIV-infected people were protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
1999: In his first state of the nation address, South African President Thabo Mbeki promises to tackle rampaging crime. The nation's murder rate is the third highest in the world and more than 49,000 cases of rape were reported in 1998.
2000: The US Navy resumes training on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, where a fatal accident that killed a civilian guard at the range led to a year long occupation of the area by protesters.
2002: WorldCom Inc, the second-largest US telecommunications company, discloses it inflated its cash flow by US$3.8 billion. The questionable accounting methods eventually led to bankruptcy and lawmakers call for an overhaul of Securities and Exchange Commission accounting rules.
2008: Queen Elizabeth II strips Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe of knighthood.
2012: The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad suffers an embarrassing string of high-ranking defections, with dozens of soldiers including senior officers reported to have fled to Turkey.
 
TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS
Russia's Czar Nicholas I (1796-1855); Antonio Gaudi, Spanish architect (1852-1926); Lord Louis Mountbatten, English statesman (1900-1979); George Orwell, British writer (1903-1950); Sidney Lumet, US director (1924-2011); Carly Simon, US singer (1945- ); Jimmie Walker, US actor/comedian (1947- ); George Michael, pop singer (1963-2016); Ricky Gervais, British actor/writer/director (1961- )
 
- AP