Today is the 309th day of 2021. There are 56 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2010: Jamaican social anthropologist Professor Barry Chevannes loses his battle with pancreatic cancer.

OTHER EVENTS

1605: English authorities arrest Guy Fawkes, the leader of the “Gunpowder Plot” to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

1872: Suffragist Susan B Anthony is fined US$100 for attempting to vote in a US presidential election. She never pays the fine.

1895: George B Selden of Rochester, New York, receives the first US patent for an automobile.

1914: France and Britain declare war on Turkey; Britain annexes Cyprus.

1956: Britain and France land troops in Egypt during fighting between Egyptian and Israeli forces around the Suez Canal. A ceasefire is declared two days later.

1962: United Nations General Assembly demands all nuclear tests cease by January 1, 1963.

1967: An Anglican bishop announces his resignation in protest against South Africa’s apartheid system.

1974: Ella T Grasso is elected governor of Connecticut, the first woman to win gubernatorial office in the US without succeeding her husband.

1978: Former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi makes a major political comeback, winning a seat in the lower house of Parliament.

1985: The UN General Assembly approves a resolution calling on Vietnam to withdraw its forces from Cambodia.

1987: South Africa releases Govan Mbeki, an African National Congress leader and colleague of Nelson Mandela, after 23 years in prison.

1988: Algeria’s President Chadli Bendjedid appoints former head of military security to form new government in wake of widespread riots.

1992: In its first free elections since 1981, Ghana’s leader Jerry J Rawlings becomes president.

1993: Talks are held on restoring ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power in Haiti.

1994: Former US President Ronald Reagan, 83, discloses he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. George Foreman, 45, becomes boxing’s oldest heavyweight champion by knocking out Michael Moorer in the 10th round of their World Boxing Association fight in Las Vegas.

1995: A draft peace accord presented to the parties in Bosnia excludes Serb leader Radovan Karadzic from power.

2001: Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, who led the country’s Marxist-leaning Government from 1979 to 1990, is defeated in election by businessman Enrique Bolanos Geyer.

2006: Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death by an Iraqi court for crimes against humanity, closing a quarter-century-old chapter of violent suppression by the former dictator.

2007: A Chinese satellite — the Chang’e 1, named after a mythical Chinese goddess who flew to the moon — successfully enters lunar orbit, a month after rival Japan put its own probe into orbit around the moon.

2008: British beekeepers swarm Parliament and the prime minister’s office, demanding more funds for research after the number of Britain’s honey bees dropped by nearly a third in the past year.

2009: Saudi Arabia sends fighter jets and artillery rounds across the border into northern Yemen in a military incursion apparently aimed at helping its troubled southern neighbour control an escalating Shiite rebellion.

2010: A surge of searing gas races down the sides of Mount Merapi, smothering houses, cattle and Indonesian villagers in its path. The death toll after the volcano’s largest eruption in a century soared to 122.

2013: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford acknowledges for the first time that he smoked crack probably “a year ago” but refuses to resign as leader of Canada’s largest city.

2014: Amid Ebola disaster, World Health Organization picks new chief to take over Africa office that has been accused of bungling response to outbreak in its early stages.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Philippe de Plessis-Mornay, French author (1549-1623); Will Durant, US historian-philosopher (1885-1981); Roy Rogers, former US cowboy actor (1912-1998); Elke Sommer, German actress (1940- ); Art Garfunkel, US pop singer (1941- ); Tatum O’Neal, US actress (1963- ); Sam Shepard, US actor/playwright (1943-2017)

— AP/Jamaica Observer