Today is the 145th day of 2021. There are 220 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1986: An estimated seven million Americans participate in ‘Hands Across America’, forming a line across the country to raise money for the nation’s hungry and homeless.

OTHER EVENTS

1787: The Constitutional Convention is convened in Philadelphia.

1846: Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte escapes to London from imprisonment in Ham, France. He returns two years later and is elected president of France.

1911: Revolution in Mexico overthrows President Porfirio Diaz.

1914: Britain’s House of Commons passes Irish Home Rule Bill, but Irish autonomy remains suspended during World War I.

1915: With the European powers preoccupied by war, China is forced to accept a Japanese ultimatum regarding rights and privileges.

1923: Independence of Transjordan — now Jordan — under Amir Abdullah is proclaimed.

1961: US President John F Kennedy asks the nation to work toward putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

1963: Leaders of six African nations, meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, form Organisation of African Unity. Africa Day (formerly African Freedom Day and African Liberation Day) is the annual commemoration of the foundation of the Organisation of African Unity (now known as the African Union). It is celebrated in various countries on the African continent, as well as around the world.

1969: Parliamentary Government in Sudan is overthrown in bloodless coup and Major General Jafaar Numeiry heads new military regime.

1970: United States places first of its MIRV missiles, with multiple warheads capable of striking different targets, in underground silos in North Dakota.

1979: American Airlines DC-10 loses an engine and nosedives into ground at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, killing all 272 people aboard.

1985: Emir of Kuwait escapes death when terrorists detonate a bomb in his motorcade. Extremist Jihad Islamic organisation claims responsibility.

1988: Israeli army imposes curfews confining 200,000 Arabs as Palestine Liberation Organization-mandated general strike shuts down commerce and transportation in occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

1989: Chinese Premier Li Peng denies that troops surrounding Beijing are deployed to crush student protests.

1991: In a two-day airlift, Israel brings 15,000 Ethiopian Jews from the besieged city of Addis Ababa to Israel.

1992: Jay Leno makes his debut as permanent host of NBC’s Tonight Show, succeeding Johnny Carson.

1997: Rebels topple the Government of Sierra Leone in a violent coup; Polish voters adopt a constitution that removes the last traces of communism.

1998: Indonesia’s new president, B J Habibie, announces that elections will be held and begins releasing some political prisoners.

1999: North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) top policy-makers approve a plan for a 50,000-strong force to be sent to Kosovo when Serb troops withdraw.

2000: The Chinese army begins removing British names from military buildings in Hong Kong.

2001: Human rights organisation Amnesty International marks 40 years of activism. The organisation, which won the Nobel Prize in 1977, has dealt with the cases of 47,000 prisoners of conscience.

2002: A China Airlines passenger jet carrying 206 passengers and 19 crew members breaks up in the air and crashes into the Taiwan Strait.

2003: The Israeli Cabinet votes to accept the steps outlined in an internationally endorsed “road map” for Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, but notes that it is not declaring unqualified support for the road map as a whole.

2005: Suspected Basque rebels detonate a powerful car bomb during rush hour in Madrid, injuring 52 people in the sixth attack since Spain’s prime minister offered the group negotiations if it renounces violence.

2006: Sudan says it will permit the UN to lay the groundwork for possible deployment of a peacekeeping force in Darfur, but cautions that the world body’s role would be smaller than some Security Council members want. US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair hold a White House news conference in which they acknowledge making costly mistakes in Iraq, but vow to keep troops there until the fragile new Government takes hold.

2007: North Korea fires a salvo of test missiles into its coastal waters, flexing naval muscles as South Korea launches its most advanced destroyer ever, armed with a high-tech US air defence system.

2008: Michel Suleiman is sworn in as Lebanon’s president after Parliament elects him in a long-delayed vote following an 18-month political stalemate that brings the country to the brink of another civil war.

2010: Relations on the divided Korean peninsula plunge to their lowest point in a decade when the North declares it is cutting all ties to Seoul as punishment for blaming the communists for the sinking of a South Korean warship.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Ralph Waldo Emerson, US writer (1803-1882); Beverly Sills, US opera singer (1929-2007); Ian McKellen, English actor (1939- ); Mike Myers, Canadian actor/comedian (1963- ); Frank Oz, British-born director/voice of Yoda and Miss Piggy (1944- ); Lincoln Barrington “Sugar” Minott, Jamaican reggae singer, producer, and sound-system operator (1956-2010); Arthur Wint, Jamaican Olympian (1920-1992)

— AP/Jamaica Observer