Today is the 37th day of 2019. There are 328 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1945: Reggae icon Robert “’Bob” Marley is born in Nine Mile, St Ann, to 18-year-old Cedella Booker and 60-year-old Norval Marley — a captain in the British Marines and a plantation overseer of English and Syrian descent.

OTHER EVENTS

1778: Britain declares war on France.

1869: Greece agrees to leave Crete following Turkish ultimatum.

1897: Crete proclaims union with Greece.

1899: Treaty of Paris is ratified, whereby Spain cedes Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the United States for US$20 million.

1952: Britain’s King George VI dies and is succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II.

1964: England and France agree on constructing English Channel rail tunnel.

1975: Three paintings — one by Raphael and two by Piero della Francesca — are stolen from National Gallery in Urbino, Italy.

1990: West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl says he favours immediate talks with East Germany on introducing the Deutsche mark there.

1991: Colombian President Cesar Gaviria pleads for peace after a two-day rebel offensive that leaves at least 47 people dead.

1992: Three days of clashes between Islamist protesters and security forces kill 12 and injure dozens in Batna, Algeria.

1993: Armenian forces capture 12 settlements in a major offensive in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in Azerbaijan.

1994: Martti Ahtisaari wins Finland’s first direct presidential election.

1995: Two 100-ton spaceships — the biggest ever to converge in space — fly in formation in the first US-Russian rendezvous in 20 years.

1997: Marking his first year as president of Haiti, Rene Preval distributes land to peasants.

1999: The first peace talks between Kosovo Albanians and Yugoslavia open in Rambouillet, France.

2000: Hillary Rodham Clinton announces her candidacy for US Senate in New York. She later defeats the Republican candidate in November, becoming the only US first lady ever elected to public office.

2001: Ariel Sharon is elected Israeli prime minister in a landslide win over Ehud Barak.

2006: Anger over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad spills violently onto the streets of Afghanistan, where protesters direct their anger against the US. Police gun down at least four people, some as they try to break into a US military base.

2008: Seven doctors and pharmacists go on trial in Paris for the deaths of more than 100 young people who contracted a brain-destroying illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, after being treated with tainted human growth hormones. The trial follows a more than 16-year investigation.

2009: Nigerian health workers hunt down errant bottles of a poisonous teething formula as 84 infants and children have died after swallowing a syrup laced with a chemical normally found in antifreeze.

2014: A suicide bomber blows himself up at the gates of a Syrian prison and rebels storm in behind him, freeing hundreds of inmates as part of an offensive aimed at capturing key government symbols around the northern city of Aleppo.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Christopher Marlowe, English poet-dramatist (1564-1593); Queen Anne of England (1665-1714); Babe Ruth, US baseball star (1895-1948); Ronald Reagan, US president (1911-2004); Zsa Zsa Gabor, Hungarian actress (1917-2016); Bob Marley, Jamaican musician (1945-1981); Natalie Cole, US singer (1950-2015); Rick Astley, British singer (1966- ); William Alexander Anthony “Bunny Rugs” Clarke, musician (1948 – 2014); Derrick Clifton Harriott, Jamaican singer and record producer, (1939- ).