Today is the 357th day of 2021. There are eight days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1996: The Anglican Church in Jamaica ordains four women as priests for the first time in its 330 years in the Caribbean. Deacons Sybil May Morris, Patricia Leontine Johnson, Judith Amelia Daniel, and Vivette Angella Jennings were the ordinants.

OTHER EVENTS

1588: Henry, duke of Guise and leader of militant Catholics who wanted a Spanish princess on the French throne, is assassinated on King Henry III’s orders at Blois, France.

1728: Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI and Frederick William of Prussia sign Treaty of Berlin.

1783: George Washington resigns as commander in chief of the Continental Army after the American Revolution and returns to his home at Mount Vernon, Virginia.

1832: The French take Antwerp, forcing Holland to recognise Belgium’s independence.

1861: Sultan of Turkey agrees to unification of Moldavia and Wallachia as Romania.

1876: The first constitution in a Muslim country is passed in Turkey, but power remains largely in the hands of the sultan.

1920: French and British authorities approve convention-fixing boundaries of Syria and Palestine.

1947: The transistor is invented at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey. This made equipment miniaturisation possible and ushered in a tidal wave of electronic miracles, including the personal computer.

1948: Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese World War II leaders are executed in Tokyo.

1972: Earthquake strikes Managua, Nicaragua, killing 10,000.

1977: Eight French nationals kidnapped in May by guerrillas fighting for the independence of the former Spanish Sahara are handed over to UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim in Algiers.

1986: The experimental US airplane, Voyager, lands in California’s Mojave Desert after becoming the first aircraft to circumnavigate the globe non-stop without refuelling.

1989: United States sends 2,000 reinforcement troops to Panama to combat unexpectedly stiff resistance from Panamanian troops loyal to ousted General Manuel Antonio Noriega.

1993: The Rhine sweeps to its greatest height in 67 years, flooding Cologne’s old town and menacing the new parliament building in Bonn. The death toll in European flooding reaches six.

1995: A fire in Dabwali, India, kills 540 people, including 170 children, during a year-end party being held near a children’s school.

1996: Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmonov and the top Opposition Leader Sayed Abdullo Nuri sign a ceasefire agreement aimed at ending the four-year civil war.

1997: Gunmen charge into a village of rebel sympathisers in Chiapas, Mexico, and kill 45 people, including 15 children.

1998: South Korean police use water cannons and tear gas to evict a group of monks from the Chogye temple, after the monks threw firebombs and rocks at them. The clash ends a 40-day stand-off between rival monks at the spiritual home to eight million Buddhists.

2001: San Luis Governor Adolfo Rodriguez Saa takes over as interim president of Argentina, immediately halting payments on the nation’s US$132-billion debt. He resigns a week later, saying “an attitude of pettiness and haggling” within his Justicialist party has left him unable to govern.

2005: South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk resigns from his university after he was found to have faked stem cell breakthroughs that kindled worldwide optimism of revolutionary cures for disease.

2007: The world’s last Hindu monarchy is to be swept aside under an agreement signed between Nepal’s former communist rebels and its major political parties that sets the stage for the country to become a republic.

2008: A pair of pandas leave China on a long-awaited goodwill journey to their new home in Taiwan in the latest move symbolising the warming ties between the rivals.

2010: A Romanian television engineer, apparently distraught that budget cuts had reduced benefits for his autistic teenage son, dives more than 20 feet (about seven metres) from a balcony onto the floor of Romania’s Parliament, then shouts “Freedom!” as emergency workers take him out on a stretcher.

2012: Egypt’s Opposition says it will keep fighting the Islamist-backed constitution after the Muslim Brotherhood, the main group supporting the charter, claims it was passed with a 64 per cent “Yes” vote in a referendum.

2013: The last two imprisoned members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot walk free, criticising the amnesty measure that released them as a publicity stunt.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Richard Arkwright, English inventor (1732-1792); Joseph Smith, US founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (1805-1844); Jose Greco, Spanish dancer-choreographer (1918-2000); Silvia, queen of Sweden (1944- ); Akihito, emperor of Japan (1933- ); Eddie Vedder, US musician (1964- ); Olive Senior, poet laureate 2021/24, internationally acclaimed writer and poet (1941- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer