1921 - Canadians Sir Frederick Banting and Charles Best isolated insulin for the first time. It proved an effective treatment for diabetes.
1940 - The Battle of Britain began in WWII when at least 70 German bombers attacked docks in south Wales.
Foreign tourists who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 will not be allowed to enter Canada for quite some time, with the government unwilling to jeopardize progress made on containing the virus, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday.
In the small seaside town of Blokhus in Denmark, the world’s tallest sandcastle has been completed, weighing nearly 5,000 tonnes and towering over 20 metres high, its designers said Wednesday.
A group of British lawmakers yesterday urged the government to take tougher action against China over its treatment of minority groups, including a partial Winter Olympics boycott and cotton trade ban.
A British parliamentary standards committee yesterday cleared Prime Minister Boris Johnson of breaching a lawmakers’ code of conduct over a luxury Caribbean holiday, but criticised his handling of the matter.
Chinese researchers want to send more than 20 of China's largest rockets to practice turning away a sizable asteroid - a technique that may eventually be crucial if a killer rock is on a collision course with Earth.
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro said on Wednesday he may not accept the result of a presidential election next year unless the voting system, which uses computers to record votes, is replaced with printed ballots that he favors.
Eight Tamil Tiger rebels have been killed in fresh clashes in Sri Lanka's embattled northern and eastern regions, the defence ministry said yesterday.
Security forces killed seven rebels in the northern district of Vavuniya late Sunday in a gunbattle along their defence lines, the ministry said.
Ten people died overnight in an explosion and fire at a cafe in a market in Russia's southern Orenburg region overnight, Russian news agencies reported yesterday....
Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian yesterday appointed the island's top China negotiator as the new premier, urging him to be firm in his dealings with Beijing....
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned yesterday that Iran would retaliate severely to any possible attack by the United States over Tehran's controversial nuclear programme....
India's Supreme Court is to hear a petition, which says the country's landmark civilian nuclear deal with the United States could threaten national security, a report said yesterday....
The Sri Lankan unit of Royal Dutch Shell suffered damages of at least 700,000 dollars in an air attack by Tamil Tiger rebels last month, the company said yesterday.
Two bombs exploded at the Anglo-Dutch company's storage facility on the outskirts of Colombo, damaging one of its four storage terminals and disabling its fire-fighting operations, the company said.
"There was big damage to our fire-fighting facility and we estimate it will cost us in excess of 75 million rupees (700,000 dollars) to put things back," Shell's Sri Lankan country director, Hassan Madani, told reporters here.
Eight Afghan policemen were killed when a roadside bomb tore through their vehicle in the southern province of Kandahar yesterday, a police commander said....
Afghanistan's parliament voted to sack the war-torn country's foreign minister yesterday amid an uproar over Iran's forced return of thousands of refugees.
Foreign minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta lost a no-confidence vote by a large majority in a second round of voting, after the first round on Thursday had hinged on a single spoilt ballot.
Refugees Affairs Minister Akbar Akbar lost his job in Thursday's vote.
Spanta was accused of not doing enough to persuade Iran to ease its policy of forced repatriation, while Akbar allegedly failed to help accommodate thousands of refugees forced out by Iran.
Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said yesterday that Israel is ready for serious discussions with Arab nations over a revived peace proposal, as shuttle diplomacy in the region continued apace....
