1921: President Warren G Harding nominates former President William Howard Taft to be chief justice of the US Supreme Court, succeeding the late Edward Douglass White.

2008: US President George W Bush signs legislation to pay for the war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of his presidency and beyond, hailing the US$162-billion plan as a rare product of bipartisan cooperation.

2011: The UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon issues an indictment naming four suspects in the assassination of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri (rah-FEEK' hah-REER'-ee), including a high-ranking Hezbollah militant linked to the 1983 truck bombings at the US and French embassies in Kuwait.

2016: Saying it was the right thing to do, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter announces that transgender people would be allowed to serve openly in the military, ending one of the last bans on service in the armed forces.

George Duhamel, French author (1884-1966); Walter Ulbricht, East German Communist leader (1893-1973); Czeslaw Milosz, Czech poet and Nobel laureate (1911-2004); Lena Horne, US singer (1917-2010); Anthony 'Tony' Gambrill, Jamaican writer (1935-); David Alan Grier, actor/comedian (1955-); Vincent D'Onofrio, US actor (1959-); Fantasia, rhythm-and-blues singer (1984- ); Michael Phelps, Olympic gold medal swimmer (1985- )

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