HISTORY TODAY

 1893 – Abdur Rahman Khan accepts the Durand Line as the border between Afghanistan and the British Raj.

 1958 – A team of rock climbers led by Warren Harding completes the first ascent of The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley.

 1980 – The NASA space probe Voyager I makes its clos- est approach to Saturn and takes the first images of its rings.

 1997 – Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

 2001 – War in Afghanistan: Taliban forces abandon Kabul, ahead of advancing Afghan Northern Alliance troops.  2003 – Shanghai Transrapid sets a new world speed record (501 kilometres per hour (311 mph)) for commer- cial railway systems, which remains the fastest for unmod- ified commercial rail vehicles.

 2014 – The Philae lander, deployed from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe, reaches the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

 2015 – Two suicide bombers detonate explosives in Bourj el-Barajneh, Beirut, killing 43 people and injuring over 200 others.

 2017 – The 7.3 Mw Kermanshah earthquake shakes the northern Iran–Iraq border with a maximum Mercalli inten- sity of VIII (Severe). At least 410 people are killed and over 7,000 are injured.  2021 – The Los Angeles Superior Court formally ends the 14-year conservatorship to pop singer Britney Spears.