Today is the 323rd day of 2021. There are 42 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1862: Castleton Botanical Gardens in St Mary is established.

OTHER EVENTS

1919: The US Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles, one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I which ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers.

1969: Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean make man’s second landing on the moon.

1973: The Cambodian presidential palace in Phnom Penh is bombed by a lone military pilot, killing three people and wounding 10. President Lon Nol, a target of the raid, is not injured.

1977: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat arrives in Israel on his first peace mission to that nation and receives a warm welcome from principal political leaders.

1980: A plane carrying 120 Cuban refugees arrives in Miami as an airlift of refugees from Havana begins. The new arrivals are among 600 Cubans stranded at the port of Mariel after the Cuban Government closed the port and ended the boatlift of refugees to the US in September.

1985: US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S Gorbachev meet for the first time at a summit in Geneva.

1990: Nepal adopts a new constitution, creating a democratic government five months after a popular revolt reduces the all-powerful king to a constitutional monarch.

1992: In a big concession to the South African Government, the African National Congress offers whites a guaranteed share of power in negotiations on a new constitution.

1996: Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul II meet in a historic first encounter in Rome.

1998: The impeachment inquiry against US President Bill Clinton opens with testimony by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who accuses the president of perjury and obstructing justice.

1999: US Congress votes to pay US $926 million in back dues to the UN to keep the US from losing the right to vote in the General Assembly.

2000: Thousands of Spaniards, from skinheads to women in fur coats, flock to the tomb of General Francisco Franco in Valle de los Caidos to mark the 25th anniversary of the dictator’s death.

2003: The South African Cabinet approves a plan to spend approximately 1.9 billion rand (US$287 million) to launch a programme to provide antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients free of charge. The programme will be fully implemented by 2008.

2004: Sudanese Government and rebel officials again pledge to end the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan — this time making the pledge before the UN Security Council.

2005: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez accuses Washington of plotting to overthrow him and wants to expel American missionaries he claims have links to the US’s Central Intelligence Agency.

2006: Russia and the US sign a key trade agreement, removing the last major obstacle in Moscow’s 13-year journey to join the World Trade Organisation.

2007: The UN-backed genocide tribunal in Cambodia arrests the former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan, 76, following his release from a hospital in the capital.

2009: UNICEF urges the world to help the one billion children still deprived of food, shelter, clean water or health care — and the hundreds of millions more threatened by violence — two decades after the UN adopted a treaty guaranteeing children’s rights.

2010: US President Barack Obama wins North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit agreement to build a missile shield over Europe.

2011: Moammar Gadhafi’s former heir apparent Seif al-Islam is captured by revolutionary fighters in the southern desert just over a month after his father was killed, setting off joyous celebrations across Libya and closing the door on the possibility that the fugitive son could stoke further insurrection.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Ferdinand de Lesseps, French builder of Suez Canal (1805-1894); Indira Gandhi, Indian prime minister (1917-1984); Calvin Klein, US clothing designer (1942- ); Jodie Foster, US actress (1962- ); Larry King, US talk show host (1933-202); Ted Turner, US media mogul (1938- ); Allison Janney, US actress (1960- ); Savion Glover, US dancer/choreographer (1973- ); Winston “Merritone” Blake (1940- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer