Today is the 238th day of 2021. There are 127 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS

2020: A 4.8-magnitude earthquake shakes Jamaica.

OTHER EVENTS

1071: Turkish Seljuks beat the Byzantine forces at the Battle of Manzikert (now Malazgirt, Turkey), gaining entry into Anatolia and opening the road to Europe.

1346: English archers defeat French knights at Battle of Crecy in northern France.

1541: Suleiman I, Sultan of Turkey, annexes Hungary.

1847: Liberia is proclaimed an independent republic.

1883: The volcano Krakatoa erupts on the island Krakatau, near Indonesia, creating tsunami waves that kill more than 36,000 people.

1896: Insurrection begins in the Philippines against the Spanish.

1915: German army captures Brest-Litovsk in Russia during World War I.

1920: The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing American women the right to vote, is declared in effect.

1934: Adolf Hitler demands that France turn over the Saar region to Germany.

1936: Treaty ends British occupation of Egypt, except Suez Canal zone, and Britain and Egypt form alliance for 20 years.

1937: Japan blockades Chinese shipping.

1939: The first televised Major League Baseball game is shown in the United States, a double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field.

1942: German army reaches Stalingrad in Soviet Union during World War II.

1945: Japanese envoys board US battleship Missouri to receive surrender instructions at the end of World War II.

1947: The UN Security Council passes a resolution for both the Dutch and Indonesians to adhere to a ceasefire order.

1952: Floods caused by monsoon rains inundate 90 per cent of Manila, causing at least eight deaths. It is Manila’s third flood in a month.

1957: The Soviet Union announces it has successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile.

1959: Chinese troops cross into India’s north-eastern territory after a border dispute. They withdraw two years later.

1964: Student and Buddhist riots force resignation of Government of Premier Nguyen Khanh in South Vietnam.

1970: North Vietnam sends its chief negotiator back to Vietnam peace talks in Paris after 8 1/2-month boycott of negotiations.

1973: The Cambodian military reports that Khmer Rouge rebel troops had severed Phnom Penh’s two vital supply roads — one leading to the seaport and the other to rice fields.

1978: Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice is elected the 264th pope of the Roman Catholic Church, following the death of Paul VI. The new pontiff takes the name John Paul I.

1985: A special French investigator issues a report clearing France’s Socialist Government and the intelligence service of involvement in the sinking of the Greenpeace protest vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour on July 10.

1988: Nationwide strike paralyses Government and transportation in Myanmar and anti-government rallies spread.

1989: At least 19 people are killed, including 12 guerrillas, in battle in southern Mozambique town of Macio.

1990: Number of US soldiers, airmen and sailors in the Gulf reaches 60,000.

1991: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev promises new national elections after the signing of the Union Treaty, but there appears to be little support for the treaty in the wake of a failed coup attempt.

1992: Serb militiamen pound Sarajevo with rockets and mortars, setting fire to medieval Turkish baths and the main library in the Bosnian capital.

1993: Egyptian-born Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and 14 others are charged in an attack on New York’s World Trade Center earlier in the year.

1994: US officials acknowledge that the current session of Congress won’t pass legislation for universal health insurance coverage, which US President Bill Clinton made the centrepiece of his legislative agenda.

1995: The Communist Party in Russia starts a campaign that calls for resurrection of the Soviet state that collapsed in 1991.

1996: Former military strongman Chun Doo-hwan is sentenced to death after being convicted of mutiny and treason in South Korea. His successor, Roh Tae-woo, is also found guilty and sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison. They are pardoned a year later.

1997: Former South African President F W de Klerk resigns as the head of the National Party, which created the practice of apartheid, and leaves politics.

1998: A three-week-old rebellion reaches the outskirts of Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, and hundreds of soldiers are killed or wounded.

2000: Somalis celebrate the election of Abdiqasim Salad Hassan, their first president in nearly a decade.

2001: Ethnic Albanian rebels hand over machine guns, mortar tubes and other heavy weaponry on first day of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) mission to collect arms from Macedonia’s militants.

2002: A Spanish judge suspends the Batasuna political party for three years for its alleged ties to Euzkadi ta Askatasuna, known as ETA, an armed group of Basque separatists considered a terrorist group by the Spanish government.

2003: Rwandan President Paul Kagame is the overwhelming winner of presidential elections. The election was the first since the 1994 genocide.

2004: Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, makes a dramatic return to Najaf and swiftly wins agreement from a rebel cleric and the Government to end three weeks of fighting between his militia and US-Iraqi forces.

2005: A fire races through a crowded, run-down Paris apartment building housing African immigrants killing 17 people, mainly children trapped while they slept, and triggers angry calls for decent housing for the needy in the French capital.

2006: The Government of East Timor hails a UN Security Council decision to authorise 1,600 international police to help restore stability after clashes between rival security forces in the capital spill into gang warfare, looting and arson.

2007: Massive fires consume large areas of southern Greece for a third day and race toward the site of the ancient Olympics. At least 57 people have been killed in the country’s worst wildfires in decades.

2008: Russia recognises the independence claims of two Georgian breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

2009: Edward “Ted” Kennedy dies at 77. The brother of President John F Kennedy and Senator Robert F Kennedy, he was the US Senate’s dominant liberal and most skilful deal-maker.

2010: The Taliban hints they may launch attacks against foreigners helping Pakistan respond to the worst floods in the country’s history, saying their presence was “unacceptable”. The UN says it will not be deterred by violent threats.

2011: A car loaded with explosives crashes into the main United Nations’ building in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja and explodes, killing at least 18 people in one of the deadliest assaults on the international body in a decade. A radical Muslim sect claims responsibility for the blast.

2012: Dozens of bloodied bodies are buried in massage graves in a Damascus suburb where activists claim more than 300 people have been killed over the past week in a major government offensive to take back control of rebel-held areas in and around the capital.

2014: Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas agree to an open-ended ceasefire after seven weeks of fighting — an uneasy deal that halts the deadliest war the sides have fought in years.

2018: Jamaican Government Minister Easton Douglas, former vice-president of the People’s National Party, dies.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Sir Robert Walpole, first prime minister of Britain (1676-1745); Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, French scientist (1743-1794); Guillame Apollinaire, French poet (1880-1918); Peggy Guggenheim, US art collector (1898-1979); Albert Sabin, Polish microbiologist, developed oral polio vaccine (1906-1993); Julio Cortazar, Argentine writer (1914-1984); Branford Marsalis, US jazz musician (1960- ); Macaulay Culkin, US actor (1980- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer