This is the 124th day of 2022. There are 241 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1927: After 2 1/2 years the Hermitage Dam on the Wag Water River in eastern Jamaica is opened. It is 142ft high, 465ft wide, has a capacity of 430 million gallons, and is to serve the Kingston and St Andrew areas.

OTHER EVENTS

1863: New Maori uprisings begin in New Zealand.

1904: The United States takes over construction of the Panama Canal from the French.

1916: Responding to a demand from President Woodrow Wilson, Germany agrees to limit its submarine warfare, averting a diplomatic break with Washington. (However, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare the following year.)

1927: The US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded.

1932: Mobster Al Capone, convicted of income-tax evasion, enters the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. (He was later transferred to Alcatraz Island.)

1961: A group of “Freedom Riders” leaves Washington, DC, for New Orleans to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals.

1970: Four students protesting against the Vietnam War are killed by Ohio National Guardsmen at Kent State University in the US. Nine others are wounded.

1976: Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser announces that Waltzing Matilda will serve as his country’s anthem at the upcoming Olympic Games.

1980: Yugoslav strongman Marshal Josip Broz Tito dies three days before his 88th birthday.

1982: British destroyer Sheffield is sunk by Argentine plane off the Falklands.

1990: First free elections held in Croatia. The Democratic Union, led by historian and former communist Franjo Tudjman, wins. Latvia’s Parliament declares independence from Soviet Union.

1991: In keeping with the constitution passed by the newly elected parliament, Albanian President Ramiz Alia gives up all his Communist Party posts.

1992: Kuwaiti oil production returns to levels before the 1990 Iraqi invasion.

1994: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Orgganization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat sign a historic accord on Palestinian autonomy that grants self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

1995: Turkey announces it has pulled out the last of its troops from northern Iraq, six weeks after 35,000 soldiers crossed the border to wipe out Kurdish rebel bases.

1998: A major Swiss bank settles the claim of a 71-year-old Holocaust survivor, the first settlement in the dispute over Jewish-owned accounts missing since World War II. Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski is given four life sentences plus 30 years by a federal judge in Sacramento, California, under a plea agreement sparing him the death penalty.

1999: The leader of Northern Ireland’s major Protestant party meets Catholic protesters for the first time, hoping to prevent the violence that has accompanied a disputed parade in the predominantly Protestant town of Portadown.

2000: A teen who hijacked a passenger bus in Japan and killed a female passenger is arrested after police storm the vehicle, ending a 15-hour stand-off.

2001: The US is voted off the UN Human Rights Commission for the first time in the world body’s history.

2002: A passenger plane belonging to Nigeria’s private EAS Airlines crashes in a densely populated suburb of the northern city of Kano, killing 148 people.

2003: A series of tornado-laden storms kill 48 people across the Midwestern and southern United States, injuring hundreds of others.

2005: Israel freezes the handover of West Bank towns, citing Palestinian security forces’ failure to disarm militants in areas under their control.

2006: Ehud Olmert is formally sworn in as Israel’s prime minister with his new coalition Government, winning parliamentary approval to pursue his goal of drawing Israel’s final borders by 2010. A federal judge sentences Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison for his role in the 9/11 attacks, telling the convicted terrorist “You will die with a whimper.”

2007: A boat loaded with more than 160 migrants capsizes about a half-mile south of Providenciales Island in the Atlantic Ocean. The bodies of 61 migrants are eventually recovered, 78 survive, and more than a dozen go missing.

2008: Two unmanned Georgian spy planes are shot down over the country’s breakaway region of Abkhazia.

2009: Iraq’s Government rules out allowing US combat troops to remain in Iraqi cities despite concern that the Iraqi forces cannot cope with the security challenge after a resurgence of bombings in recent weeks.

2010: Iceland’s clouds of volcanic ash are menacing European air traffic again, but transport chiefs insist they are learning from the previous month’s crisis and will not let the hard-to-measure emissions ground their continent again.

2011: President Barack Obama says he has decided not to release death photos of terrorist Osama bin Laden because their graphic nature could incite violence and create national security risks for the United States.

2015: Former technology executive Carly Fiorina and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson join the rapidly expanding 2016 Republican presidential class, casting themselves as political outsiders in underdog campaigns, eager to challenge the elite of both parties.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Sir Thomas Lawrence, English artist (1769-1830); Emmanuel Robles, Algerian-French novelist/playwright (1914-1995); Hosni Mubarak, former Egyptian president (1928-2020); Audrey Hepburn, Belgian-born actress (1929-1993); Roberta Peters, US opera singer (1930-2017); Katherine Jackson, matriarch of the Jackson musical family (1930-); Manuel Benitez (El Cordobes), Spanish bullfighter (1936- ); Jackie Jackson, singer (1951-); Randy Travis, US country singer (1959- ); Mary McDonough, actress (1961-); Kimora Lee Simmons, TV personality/fashion designer (1975- ); Lance Bass, ‘N Sync singer (1979-).

– AP and Jamaica Observer