TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1907: Earthquake in Jamaica destroys Kingston and takes 1,000 lives.

OTHER EVENTS

1784: United States ratifies peace treaty with England, formally ending American War of Independence.

1858: Felice Orsini’s plot to assassinate Napoleon III is uncovered.

1998: The UN Security Council votes unanimously to rebuke Iraq for not giving arms inspectors full access. Iraq accuses an American arms inspector of being a spy.

1999: The United States tells the World Trade Organisation that US$520 million in European imports will face punitive tariffs unless an agreement is reached on the sale of US bananas.

2000: Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines agrees to pay Alaska $3.5 million for dumping toxic chemicals — including dry-cleaning fluid — and oil-contaminated water into the state’s waters.

2001: Cambodia’s Senate approves a law to create a tribunal to try Khmer Rouge leaders. A cabinet minister says the court will spare no leader of the murderous regime.

2002: The US House Energy and Commerce Committee releases a letter sent in August 2001 by an executive of Enron Corp to Kenneth Lay, the energy company’s chairman and chief executive officer, pointing out improprieties in the now-bankrupt Enron’s accounting practices.

2003: The US Food and Drug Administration suspends 27 US gene therapy trials after a second child in four months develops leukaemia-like symptoms in a French trial that used a similar technique.

2004: In a new signal that Libya is serious about renouncing its weapons of mass destruction, the North African country ratifies the nuclear test ban treaty despite the fact that its nuclear programme was far from producing a weapon. The treaty is yet 12 nations short of the 44 ratifications needed for it to enter into force.

2005: In Sri Lanka, the infant dubbed “Baby 81” nurses from a bottle of milk and kicks playfully at a pink blanket as nine desperate, heartbroken women quarrel over him — all claiming he was torn from them by the tsunami.

2007: Iran and Nicaragua announce that they will open embassies in each other’s capitals as Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad courts leftist allies in Latin America to offset Washington’s global influence.

2008: Militants with suicide-bombing vests, grenades and AK-47 rifles attack Kabul’s most popular luxury hotel as the Norwegian embassy holds a meeting. At least eight people, including one American and one Norwegian, are killed.

2009: A French court acquits six doctors and pharmacists in the deaths of at least 114 people who contracted a brain-destroying disease after being treated with tainted human growth hormones.

2012: The luxury cruise ship Concordia runs aground off the coast of Tuscany, gashing open the hull and forcing some 4,200 people aboard to evacuate aboard lifeboats to a nearby island. The crash killed 32 people.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Valdemar I, the Great, Danish king (1131-1182); Zacharias Topelius, Finnish writer (1818-1898); Giulio Andreotti, former Italian prime minister (1919-2013); Faye Dunaway, US actress (1941- )