Today is the 141st day of 2011. There are 224 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

1981: A State funeral is held in Jamaica for reggae icon Robert ‘Bob’ Marley who died in Miami over a week ago as a result of cancer.

Other Events

1840: New Zealand is declared a British colony.

1894: Serbian Constitution of 1869 is restored.

1927: US aviator Charles A Lindbergh lands in Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across Atlantic Ocean.

1956: First hydrogen bomb is exploded by the US over Bikini Atoll in Pacific.

1974: Thailand government resigns seven months after being swept into power by student rebellion that overthrew military regime.

1988: Soviet Communist Party dismisses party leaders in southern republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, where 32 people have died in ethnic turmoil so far in 1988.

1989: Students occupying Tiananmen Square in China reject government ultimatum to leave the square.

1991: Rajiv Gandhi, candidate for prime minister of India, is assassinated by Sri Lanka’s separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels in a suicide bomb attack in the South Indian city of Madras.

1994: Bakili Muluzi sworn in as Malawi’s first democratically elected president.

1997: Ukraine and Poland sign a reconciliation agreement to formally end conflict and put centuries of bloodshed behind them.

1998: After weeks of protests and riots in Indonesia, President Suharto resigns, ending a 32-year reign.

2002: The US lifts a freeze on financial aid to Yugoslavia, citing the country’s commitment to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal. The aid was suspended because of Yugoslavia’s perceived failure to assist the tribunal in apprehending war crimes suspects.

2008: A group of up to 300 young men brutally kill 11 people who were accused of being witches and wizards in western Kenya.

Today’s Birthdays

Albrecht Duerer, German artist (1471-1528); Alexander Pope, English poet (1686-1744); Henri Rousseau, French painter (1844-1910); Lazaro Cardenas, Mexican president (1895-1970); Andrey Sakharov, Russian physicist, dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1921-1989); J Malcolm Fraser, former Australian prime minister (1930-); Leo Sayer, British singer (1948-); Mr T, US actor (1952-); Al Franken, US comedian/politician (1951-).