Today is the 101st day of 2020. There are 265 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1912: The luxury liner Titanic sets sail from Southampton, England, on its ill-fated maiden voyage.

OTHER EVENTS

1790: The US patent law is approved.

1849: Walter Hunt of New York patents the safety pin.

1864: Archduke Maximilian of Austria accepts title of Emperor of Mexico.

1866: The American Society for the prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is chartered.

1919: Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is killed in an army ambush in Chinameca, Mexico.

1925: The novel The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald, is published in the United States.

1932: Paul von Hindenburg is re-elected German president over Adolf Hitler.

1941: Nazi puppet state formed in Croatia.

1945: US troops liberate Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany.

1959: Japan’s Crown Prince Akihito marries a commoner, Michiko Shoda.

1961: Adolf Eichmann, former Nazi, is put on trial as a war criminal in Jerusalem.

1963: The nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher fails to surface off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in a disaster that claims 129 lives.

1972: United States and Soviet Union sign treaty banning biological warfare.

1974: Golda Meir announces her resignation as prime minister of Israel.

1976: Israel holds elections in occupied West Bank, despite rioting.

1981: Imprisoned Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands wins election to the British Parliament.

1984: A rally to demand free presidential elections after 20 years of dictatorship draws a million people in Rio de Janeiro.

1986: United States conducts nuclear test in Nevada desert, despite growing protests among peace groups and strong Soviet campaign for nuclear test ban.

1990: Palestinian terrorist group Abu Nidal frees a Frenchwoman, a Belgian man and their daughter after 2 1/2 years in captivity.

1993: Chris Hani, one of South Africa’s top black leaders, is murdered.

1996: Yugoslavia frees 211 Bosnian Muslims after eight months of detention; US President Bill Clinton vetoes a bill that would have outlawed a technique used to end pregnancies in their late stages that opponents call “partial-birth” abortion.

1998: In what is heralded as the biggest breakthrough since “The Troubles” started in 1969, the faction leaders of Northern Ireland and the governments of Britain and Ireland agree on a model for governing the province.

2000: The leaders of North and South Korea agree to meet for the first time in June, marking a major step forward in relations between the two nations.

2001: South Africa becomes the first country in the world to approve a solution that can be used in place of blood in transfusions; the Netherlands legalises mercy killings and assisted suicide for patients with unbearable, terminal illness.

2003: US Congress clears legislation to create a nationally coordinated alert system to respond to child abductions.

2008: Nepal holds its first election in nine years — a historic vote meant to secure lasting peace in a land riven by communist insurgents and an autocratic king.

2009: A US immigration appeals board rules that retired auto worker John Demjanjuk can be deported to Germany to face charges he served as a Nazi death camp guard during World War II.

2011: A senior member of Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement makes a rare appeal to the Israeli public for a halt to the escalating cross-border fighting, telling an Israeli radio station in fluent Hebrew that Hamas is ready to stop its rocket fire if Israel ends its attacks on Gaza.

2012: Shining Path rebels seek a $10-million ransom for 40 Peruvian construction workers abducted in a pre-dawn raid at the country’s main natural gas field in the Amazon jungle.

2013: An Iraqi official says the country has forced an Iranian plane headed to Syria to land in Baghdad so authorities could search for arms. No weapons were found. US President Barack Obama proposes a US$3.8-trillion budget that would raise taxes on smokers and wealthy Americans and trim social security benefits for millions. The financially beleaguered US Postal Service backpedals on its plan to end Saturday mail delivery. Robert Edwards, 87, a Nobel Prize winner from Britain, whose pioneering in vitro fertilisation research led to the first test tube baby, dies near Cambridge, England.

2017: Justice Neil Gorsuch takes his place as the newest addition on the bench of the Supreme Court, restoring a narrow conservative majority. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley (R) resigns rather than face impeachment and pleads guilty to two misdemeanor campaign violations that arose during an investigation of his alleged affair with a top aide. The New York Daily News and ProPublica win the Pulitzer Prize for public service for uncovering how police abused eviction rules to oust hundreds of people, mostly poor minorities, from their homes. Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

William Booth, English founder of Salvation Army (1829-1912); Joseph Pulitzer, US journalist (1847-1911); Harry Morgan, US actor (1915-2011); Max von Sydow, Swedish actor (1929-2020); Omar Sharif, Egyptian-born actor (1932-2015); John Madden, former US sports commentator (1936- ); Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, US rhythm and blues singer/producer (1958- ); Mandy Moore, US actress/pop singer (1984- ); Haley Joel Osment, US actor (1988- ); Neville O’Riley Livingston, known as “Bunny Wailer”, Jamaican singer/songwriter and percussionist (1947- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer