Today’s Highlight

2010: Jamaican reggae crooner Gregory Issacs, 59, loses his battle with lung cancer.

Other Events

1874: Britain annexes Fiji islands.

1900: Transvaal is formally annexed by Britain at Pretoria, South Africa.

1909: Murder of Japan’s Prince Ito by Korean fanatics leads to Japanese dictatorship in Korea.

1918: The Canadian steamship Princess Sophia founders off the coast of Alaska; nearly 400 people perish.

1922: Fascists march on Rome and the Italian king nominates Benito Mussolini as prime minister.

1936: Germany and Italy form Rome-Berlin Axis.

1938: Japanese troops take Hankow, and Chinese Government establishes itself at Chungking; Libya is declared part of Italy.

1956: Egypt, Jordan and Syria form a unified military command.

1962: US ambassador Adlai E Stevenson presents photographic evidence of Soviet missile bases in Cuba to the UN Security Council.

1966 – Indonesia’s former Foreign Minister Subandrio is sentenced to death after right-wing military generals Suharto and Nasution stage a coup and wrest power from Sukarno.

1971: The UN General Assembly votes to admit mainland China and expel Taiwan.

1983: US Marines and Rangers, assisted by soldiers from six Caribbean nations, invade Grenada at the order of US President Ronald Reagan, who says the action is needed to protect US citizens there.

1989: Soviet State Bank announces the ruble will be devalued by nearly 90 per cent for visiting foreigners.

1991: About 90 anti-apartheid movements, claiming to represent more than 15 million South Africans, establish a “patriotic united front” to press for black majority rule.

1995: Israeli troops start pulling out from Jenin on the West Bank, the first city to be handed over under the Israel-Palestine Liberation Organisation autonomy agreement.

1996: The fundamentalist Islamic Taliban militia claim to capture another Afghan province, their first advance since seizing the capital, Kabul, a month earlier.

2001: The US House of Representatives approves legislation that will give law enforcement and intelligence agencies broader powers to investigate suspected terrorists.

2005: Election officials in Baghdad announce that Iraq’s landmark constitution has been adopted by a majority of voters during a referendum.

2006: The Australian Government pledges funding for the construction of the world’s largest solar power plant, one of two projects in its new strategy to combat global warming.

2007: Four Chadian rebel groups sign a final peace agreement with their Government. The parties agree to an immediate ceasefire, amnesty for civil and military personnel and the release of all detainees from both sides of the four-year conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region.

2008: Egypt’s first female marriage registrar starts work despite complaints by some conservative clerics that the move is against Islam.

2010: Afghan President Hamid Karzai acknowledges that he receives millions of dollars in cash from Iran, adding that Washington gives him “bags of money” too because his office lacks funds.

2011: Distraught Turkish families mourn outside a mosque or seek to identify loved ones among rows of bodies as rescue workers scour debris for survivors after a 7.2-magnitude quake that killed at least 279 people in the eastern part of the country near the Iranian border.

Today’s Birthdays

Thomas B MaCauley, British historian (1800-1859); Georges Bizet, French composer (1838-1875); Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor (1881- 1973); Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, American polar explorer (1888-1957); former King Michael of Romania (1925-).

— Jamaica Observer and AP