Today is the 109th day of 2022. There are 256 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1921: Government of Ireland Act goes into effect, separating the island into the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, both with limited self-rule within Great Britain.

OTHER EVENTS

1772: English economist David Ricardo, who gave systematised and classical form to the rising social science of economics in the 19th century, is believed to have been born on or about this day.

1775: War of American Independence opens with defeat of British at Lexington and Concord in what is now the state of Massachusetts.

1783: US Congress announces end of War of American Independence.

1882: Charles Darwin, British naturalist, dies on this day at age 73 in Downe, England.

1892: The prototype of the first commercially successful American automobile is completed in Springfield, Massachusetts, by Charles E Duryea and his brother Frank.

1927: American actress Mae West is sentenced to 10 days in jail, convicted of obscenity and “corrupting the morals of youth” with her portrayal of a prostitute in the Broadway play Sex, which she also wrote; the publicity made her nationally known.

1943: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, an act of resistance by Polish Jews under Nazi occupation, begins this day and was quelled four weeks later, on May 16.

1956: Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco.

1960: Students in South Korea begin demonstrating against President Syngman Rhee, who had declared victory in the national election, which many claimed was marred by fraud; the unrest grew, ultimately forcing Rhee to resign.

1975: Aryabhata, the first uncrewed Earth satellite built by India, is launched from the Soviet Union by a Russian-made rocket.

1982: Astronauts Sally Ride and Guion Bluford Jr become the first woman and African American, respectively, selected for the NASA programme.

1993: After a 51-day stand-off with US federal agents, some 80 members of the millennialist Branch Davidian religious group perish in a fire at their compound near Waco, Texas.

1994: A Los Angeles jury awards US$3.8 million to motorist Rodney King, who was beaten by a group of policemen.

1995: In what is the worst act of terrorism in US history up to that time, a truck bomb nearly destroys the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 and injuring more than 500 people.

1999: German Parliament gathers for first time in renovated Reichstag, symbolising Government’s return to Berlin.

2003: About 100 striking Nigerian oil workers seize four offshore rigs and hold hostage 97 expatriate workers as well as more than 150 Nigerian nationals who refused to join the strike.

2005: Joseph Ratzinger of Germany appears on a Vatican balcony as the 265th pontiff, Benedict XVI. Tens of thousands gather in St Peter’s Square to cheer him.

2009: Jamaican Stephen Fray attempts to hijack CanJet 918 at Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay. Turkish Cypriot nationalists win a parliamentary election that could stifle a promising effort to reunite Cyprus, an ethnically divided Mediterranean island.

2012: India’s successful test of a powerful new missile that can carry nuclear weapons to Beijing causes barely a ripple — even in China — just days after North Korea was globally vilified for a failed rocket launch.

2018: King Mswati III announces that he is changing his country’s name from the Kingdom of Swaziland to the Kingdom of Eswatini.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Jayne Mansfield, US actress (1932-1967); Dudley Moore, British-born actor (1935-2002); Tim Curry, English actor (1946-); Ashley Judd, US actress (1968- ); Maria Sharapova, Russian tennis player (1987- ); Rivaldo, Brazilian athlete (1972- ); Manley Augustus Buchanan, better known as Big Youth, legendary toaster (1949- )

—AP/Jamaica Observer