Today’s Highlight

2009: American Airlines flight 331 arriving from Miami with approximately 148 passengers overshoots the runway at Norman Manley International and crashes on the beach on the Port Royal road.

Other Events

1807: US Congress passes the Embargo Act, designed to force peace between Britain and France by cutting off all trade with Europe.

1985: Winnie Mandela, defying expulsion order, is arrested by police who drag her from her home in Soweto, South Africa.

1988: South Africa signs accord at UN granting independence to Africa’s last colony, which will become black-ruled nation of Namibia; rubber tapper and renowned rain forest defender Chico Mendes is murdered by cattle ranchers in the western Amazon of Brazil.

1990: Lech Walesa is sworn in as Poland’s first popularly elected president.

1993: Alina Fernandez Revuelta, daughter of Cuban President Fidel Castro, leaves Cuba and is granted political asylum in the US.

1995: As thousands cheer, Yasser Arafat’s wife lights the Christmas tree in Manger Square, ushering in Bethlehem’s first Christmas under Palestinian rule.

1998: Israel’s Parliament votes overwhelmingly for early elections, signaling the demise of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ailing hard-line government and effectively freezing the already-troubled peace process with the Palestinians.

2001: Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun who leads one of the largest tribes in southern Afghanistan, is sworn in as chairman of a six-month interim government.

2002: North Korea confirms it removed and disabled monitoring devices that had been placed at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor to ensure compliance with a 1994 international agreement.

2003: The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts pays the 542 plaintiffs who agreed to a sexual abuse settlement with the archdiocese. The archdiocese will sell church property to fund the part of the $85 million settlement not covered by insurers.

2004: Saudi Arabia announces it is withdrawing its ambassador to Libya in what the kingdom called a measured response to reports Tripoli had plotted to assassinate its crown prince.

2005: An Istanbul court separately fines an author and a journalist for insulting the state, the latest convictions in Turkey under a law that European Union officials say limits freedom of expression and must be changed.

2006: The Roman Catholic Church denies a religious funeral for paralysed Italian author Piergiorgio Welby, who died after a doctor disconnected his respirator saying it would treat his public wish to “end his life”. The Vatican calls the controversial case an apparent suicide.

Today’s Birthdays

Jean Racine, French dramatist (1639-1699); Thomas Higginson, US abolitionist (1823-1911); Giacomo Puccini, Italian composer (1858-1924); Dame Peggy Ashcroft, English actress (1907-1991); Barbara Billingsley, US actress (1915- 2010); Robin Gibb (1949-) and twin Maurice Gibb (1949-2003), English-born pop singers; Vanessa Paradis, French singer and model (1972-); Ralph Fiennes, British actor (1962-).