Today is the 236th day of 2021. There are 129 days left in the year. 

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1991: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of Communist Party of the Soviet Union and urges its leadership to disband the party. 

OTHER EVENTS

AD 79: Long-dormant Mount Vesuvius erupts, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash. An estimated 20,000 people died.

1572: The slaughter of French Protestants at the hands of Catholics begins in Paris.

1814: British forces invade Washington and set fire to the Capitol and the White House.

1821: The Spanish captain general of Mexico, Juan O’Donoju, signs the Treaty of Cordoba, giving Mexico independence.

1932: Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly non-stop across the US, travelling from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, in 19 hours.

1949: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) goes into effect.

1954: President Getulio Vargas of Brazil kills himself with a gunshot to the heart.

1959: The exiled Dalai Lama charges more Chinese than Tibetans live in Tibet and the extermination of the Tibetan race is in progress. About 80,000 Tibetans have been killed during the Tibetan revolt.

1967: A group of demonstrators led by Abbie Hoffman causes a disruption at the New York Stock Exchange by tossing dollar bills onto the trading floor. American industrialist Henry J Kaiser, 85, dies in Honolulu.

1969: Iraq executes 15 people on charge of spying for United States and Israel.

1970: An explosives-laden van left by anti-war extremists blows up outside the University of Wisconsin’s Sterling Hall in Madison, killing 33-year-old researcher Robert Fassnacht.

1976: Two Soviet cosmonauts return to Earth after 48 days in orbit in space laboratory.

1981: Mark David Chapman is sentenced in New York to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of British rock star John Lennon.

1985: The pilot of a Chinese military aircraft crash lands his plane in South Korea and asks for political asylum in Taiwan. The plane’s navigator and a farmer working in a rice paddy are killed.

1989: Baseball Commissioner A Bartlett Giamatti (juh-MAH’-tee) bans Pete Rose from the game for betting on his own team, the Cincinnati Reds.

1990: Irish hostage Brian Keenan is freed by Lebanese kidnappers after more than four years in captivity.

1991: Ukraine becomes the seventh of 15 Soviet republics to declare independence.

1992: South Korea and China establish diplomatic relations. The two have been ideological enemies since Korea was divided after World War II. China invaded South Korea during the Korean War and remains one of the staunchest allies of communist North Korea. Hurricane Andrew smashes into Florida, causing $30 billion in damage; 43 US deaths are blamed on the storm.

1993: Demonstrators oust pro-Iranian warlord Alikram Gumbatov from the capital of his self-proclaimed “republic” in southern Azerbaijan.

1994: The United Nations suspends efforts to repatriate Rwandan refugees after Hutu extremists mob the first group to agree to be brought home.

1997: More than one million people attend Pope John Paul II’s mass at World Youth Day ceremony in Paris.

1998: Congo’s Angolan allies drive rebels from a string of Atlantic coast towns in a stunning reversal of rebel gains.

1999: At least 100,000 public workers march in cities around South Africa, in the largest mass labour action since apartheid ended, to demand wage increases.

2000: Rev John Kaiser, an outspoken American priest critical of the Kenyan Government’s human rights record, is found dead in western Kenya. The circumstances of his death are unclear.

2004: Chechen suicide bombers destroy two Russian airliners, killing a combined total of 90 passengers and crew.

2005: A Hong Kong judge sides with a 20-year-old gay man who challenged laws against homosexuality — including one that demands a life sentence for sodomy when one or both men are younger than 21. The judge rules the laws are demeaning.

2006: Philippine lawmakers defeat an impeachment bid against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, but a debilitating political crisis stemming from corruption accusations against her continues. The International Astronomical Union declares that Pluto is no longer a full-fledged planet, demoting it to the status of a “dwarf planet”.

2007: Chinese authorities bar Yuan Weijing, the wife of imprisoned human rights activist Chen Guangcheng, from leaving the country to accept a humanitarian award on her husband’s behalf. A judge in Inverness, Florida, sentences John Evander Couey to death for kidnapping nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford, raping her and burying her alive. (Couey dies of natural causes in 2009.) James Ford Seale, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, is sentenced to three life terms for his role in the 1964 abduction and murder of two black teenagers in south-western Mississippi. (Seale dies in 2011.) Major wildfires break out in Greece, burning half a million acres and claiming 65 lives in 11 days.

2008: An Iran-bound passenger jet carrying 90 people crashes near Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, killing at least 65 people.

2010: Scientists say they have identified a sun-like star with as many as seven different planets — including one that might be the smallest ever found outside the solar system.

2011: The US says China is on track to achieve its goal of building a modern, regionally focused military by 2020, bolstered by the development of a new stealth fighter, an aircraft carrier and a record number of space launches over the past year.

2012: A suit-clad gunman opens fire outside New York’s Empire State Building, killing a former co-worker before being gunned down by police. A Norwegian court finds Anders Behring Breivik guilty of terrorism and premeditated murder for twin attacks on July 22, 2011 that killed 77 people; he receives a 21-year prison sentence that can be extended as long as he is considered dangerous to society. The US Anti-Doping Agency wipes out 14 years of Lance Armstrong’s cycling career — including his record seven Tour de France titles — and bars him for life from the sport after concluding he’d used banned substances.

2016: A 6.2-magnitude earthquake reduces three central Italian towns to rubble and kills nearly 300 people. Astronaut Jeffrey Williams, commander of the International Space Station, marked a US recording-breaking 521st day in orbit, a number accumulated over four flights (upon his return to earth 13 days later, Williams had logged a grand total of 534 days in space). 

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

George Stubbs, English painter (1724-1806); Max Beerbohm, English author-artist (1872-1956); William Gibbs, American naval architect (1886-1967); Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine writer (1899-1986); Angie Brooks, Liberian diplomat (1928-2007); Kenny Baker, English actor, Star Wars’ R2D2 (1934-2016); Cal Ripken, US ex-baseball player (1960-); Ava DuVernay, movie director (1972- ); Dave Chappelle, actor-comedian (1973- ); James D’Arcy, actor (1975- ); Chad Michael Murray, actor (1981- ); Rupert Grint, actor in Harry Potter films (1988- ); Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jamaican dub poet (1952- ) 

— AP/Jamaica Observer