Today is the 66th day of 2019. There are 299 days left in the year. 

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1993: Operating from its Fagan Avenue, Kingston 8 headquarters, the Jamaica Observer begins publication as a weekly newspaper.

OTHER EVENTS

1573: Peace of Constantinople ends war between Turkey and Venice.

1793: France declares war on Spain, and Spanish forces invade Roussillon and Navarre.

1820: Spain’s King Ferdinand II is forced to restore the Constitution of 1812 and end the Inquisition.

1821: Neopolitan rebels are crushed by Austrians at Rieti.

1854: A sewing machine that can stitch buttonholes is patented by Charles Miller of St Louis.

1876: Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his telephone.

1926: The first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversation takes place, between New York City and London.

1935: Restoration of Saar to Germany marks beginning of German expansion.

1936: Germany violates Treaty of Versailles by occupying demilitarised zone in the Rhineland.

1939: Civil war breaks out in Madrid between communist and anti-communist factions while Nationalist forces lay siege to the city.

1941: British troops invade Italian-occupied Abyssinia — now Ethiopia — in World War II.

1947: Terrorist attack on police headquarters in Asuncion, Paraguay, sparks bloody five-month civil war.

1951: Iran’s Prime Minister Ali Razmara is assassinated.

1965: A march by civil rights demonstrators is broken up in Selma, Alabama, by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse.

1968: United States and Soviet Union pledge to protect all weaker nations from nuclear blackmail and aggression.

1975: US Senate revises its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.

1977: Saudi Arabia announces it will give one billion dollars in aid to Africa.

1988: British soldiers and police fatally shoot three Irish Republican Army guerrillas after they plant a car bomb set to go off during a military parade in British colony of Gibraltar.

1989: China declares martial law in Tibetan capital of Lhasa following three days of anti-Chinese rioting.

1990: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev demands billions of dollars in hard currency to cover Soviet investments if Lithuania secedes from Soviet Union.

1991: Forces loyal to Saddam Hussein reportedly execute as many as 400 people in southern Iraq following days of rebellion in Basra and other cities.

1992: Russian President Boris Yeltsin ends price controls on bread and other staples, leading to steep price increases.

1993: Angola says its troops have withdrawn from Huambo after two months of fighting with rebels that left 10,000 dead.

1994: Multinational African army installs new Government in Liberia.

1996: Three US servicemen are convicted in the rape of a 12-year-old Japanese girl and sentenced to between 6 1/2 and 7 years in prison.

1999: Bosnian Serb lawmakers reject the firing of their hard-line president and suspend cooperation with the country’s federal government after mediators say the strategic town of Brcko should leave Serb hands.

2001: Ariel Sharon takes over as Israel’s prime minister.

2002: Hindu-Muslim rioting in the western Indian state of Gujarat leaves more than 600 people dead. Hindu mobs massacre Muslims after a train carrying Hindu activists was torched by Muslims in the city of Godhra the previous week.

2005: A fire set by rioting gang members kills 134 inmates of a provincial jail in the Dominican Republic, where overcrowded cells are overrun with rats, cockroaches and bedbugs.

2006: A series of coordinated bombings rock a packed railway station and crowded temple in Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city, killing 20 people and injuring dozens in an attack that raised fears of communal violence.

2007: A Garuda Airlines Boeing 737-400 burst into flames after careening off a runway in Indonesia’s Yogyakarta on Java island, killing at least 21 people. Investigators said the jetliner’s front wheels had snapped off as it touched down.

2008: The Russian-backed region of Abkhazia appeals to the world community to recognise it as independent from Georgia, citing Kosovo as a precedent.

2009: The Western-backed Palestinian prime minister resigns, improving odds of a possible unity government of Fatah moderates and Hamas militants.

2010: Iraqis defy insurgents who lob hand grenades at voters and bomb a polling station in an attempt to intimidate those taking part in elections that will determine whether their country can overcome deep sectarian divides as US forces prepare to leave.

2012: The UN humanitarian chief tours the shattered Syrian district of Baba Amr but finds most residents had fled following a bloody military siege, while activists accuse the government of trying to cover up evidence of atrocities there.

2013: The UN Security Council votes unanimously for tough new sanctions to punish North Korea for its latest nuclear test, and a furious Pyongyang threatens a nuclear strike against the US.

2014: Hard-line militants turn Syria’s devastated eastern city of Raqqa into the nucleus of their vision for the Islamic caliphate they hope to establish in Syria and Iraq.

2015: Colombia’s Government and the country’s biggest rebel movement announce an agreement to begin a pilot programme for removing land mines as part of efforts to lower the intensity of a conflict that has lasted a half-century.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Allessandro Manzoni, Italian author (1785-1873); Sir John Herschel, English astronomer (1792-1871); Thomas Masaryk, Czech statesman (1850-1937); Maurice Ravel, French composer (1875-1937); Anna Magnani, Italian actress (1908-1973); Willard Scott, US weatherman for the Today shows (1934- ); Michael Eisner, US chairman, Walt Disney Co (1942- ); Rachel Weisz, British actress (1971- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer