Today is the 144th day of 2022. There are 221 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2010: Security forces enter the Tivoli Gardens community after a stand-off with gunmen. The operation is to apprend Tivoli strongman Christopher “Dudus” Coke, who was requested for extradition by the United States Government on drug-trafficking and gunrunning charges.

OTHER EVENT

1689: The Toleration Act is passed by the British Parliament, granting freedom of worship to Nonconformists and allowing them their own places of worship and their own teachers and preachers.

1738: John Wesley is converted, launching the Methodist movement which is celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day.

1822: South American rebels commanded by Antonio José de Sucre defeat Spanish royalists on the slopes of volcano Cerro Pichincha in Ecuador. The rebels occupy nearby Quito the following day.

1830: The first passenger railroad in the United States begins service between Baltimore and Elliott’s Mills, Maryland.

1844: Samuel F B Morse transmits the message, “What hath God wrought!” from Washington to Baltimore as he formally opens America’s first telegraph line.

1856: A group of abolitionists led by John Brown launches a night-time raid on a pro-slavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas Territory during which five men are murdered.

1881: Some 200 people die when the Canadian ferry Princess Victoria sinks near London, Ontario.

1890: Italy reorganises her Red Sea territories as colony of Eritrea.

1900: Britain annexes Orange Free State in Africa.

1938: Carl Magee of Oklahoma is granted a US patent for the first coin-controlled parking metre, which becomes ubiquitous on streets around the country.

1949: The Federal Republic of Germany comes into being — in the parts of Germany occupied by the Western allies — with the proclamation of its constitution.

1958: United Press International is formed through a merger of the United Press and the International News Service.

1962: London conference of Barbados, Windward and Leeward Islands ends with proposal of “Little Eight” to form new West Indies Federation.

1964: Riot erupts at football match in Lima, Peru, and 300 spectators are killed.

1969: Mitzi Green (Elizabeth Keno), American child actress in Huckleberry Finn and Little Orphan Annie, dies from cancer at 48.

1972: United States and Soviet Union agree to put US and Soviet spacemen in orbit together by 1975.

1975: US President Gerald Ford approves two Bills providing more than US$400 million for resettlement of refugees from South Vietnam and Cambodia.

1976: Britain and France open transatlantic Concorde service to Washington.

1981: Ecuador’s President Jaime Roldos Aguilera is killed in a plane crash in Andes Mountains near Peru border.

1984: Israel and the United States reject a United Nations proposal for an international peace conference on the Middle East.

1989: Ethnic Turks demanding more rights clash with security forces in Bulgaria. Indiana Jones & Last Crusade, directed by Stephen Spielberg and produced by George Lucas, premieres.

1990: US President George Bush unconditionally renews China’s “most-favoured nation” trade status with the United States for one year.

1991: Armoured personnel carrier rolls over and kills anti-army demonstrator in Slovenia.

1992: US President George Bush orders the coast cuard to intercept Haitian refugees at sea and return them to Haiti. Al Unser Jr becomes the first second-generation winner of the Indianapolis 500; his father, four-time winner Al Unser, finishes third.

1993: Kurdish rebels kill 33 Turkish soldiers in bus ambush.

1994: Stampede kills 270 pilgrims at shrine in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Four men convicted of bombing New York’s World Trade Center in 1993 are each sentenced to 240 years in prison.

1998: First multi-party vote in a region ruled by China’s communists is held in Hong Kong. Pro-democracy parties win most of the legislature seats that are up for vote.

1999: Sonia Gandhi agrees to take back the presidency of India’s main Opposition Congress Party, ending a leadership crisis.

2000: The Santiago Court of Appeals strips General Augusto Pinochet of immunity from prosecution, clearing the way for the ailing former dictator’s prosecution on human rights violations. Israel ends its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, withdrawing the last of its troops from its self-declared security zone. Eminem releases his third studio album, The Marshall Mathers LP — the fastest-ever-selling studio album; the work also won the Grammy for Best Rap Album in 2001.

2002: US President George W Bush and Russian President Vladimir V Putin sign a nuclear arms reduction treaty that calls for both nations to slash their nuclear stockpiles by two-thirds over the next decade.

2003: Oscar winning-actress Kate Winslet, 27, weds director Sam Mendes, 36, in Anguilla Island

2005: Making his first trip abroad since a bloody crackdown on protesters, Uzbek President Islam Karimov leaves on a visit to China, which has provided a rare note of support for the authoritarian Central Asian leader.

2006: Thousands of Hindus rally in the southern Nepalese town of Birgunja to protest parliament’s move to declare Nepal a secular State when it scaled back the king’s powers.

2007: The US Government stops all imports of Chinese toothpaste to test for diethylene glycol, a deadly chemical reportedly found in tubes sold elsewhere in the world.

2008: Myanmar’s ruling junta says it will let foreign aid workers and commercial ships help survivors in the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy Delta, but refuses to accept aid from US, French and British military ships which had been waiting off the coast for more than a week.

2009: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel willl continue to build homes in existing West Bank settlements, defying US calls to halt settlement growth.

2010: The doctor, whose research linking autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella influenced millions of parents to refuse the shot for their children, is banned from practising medicine in his native Britain.

2011: Egypt’s prosecutor general orders former President Hosni Mubarak put on trial on charges of corruption and conspiring in the deadly shootings of protesters during the uprising that ousted him, a stunning step against a leader whose power was nearly unquestioned for three decades.

2012: Iran and six world powers wrap up talks still far apart over how to oversee Tehran’s atomic programme, but with resolve to keep the dialogue going as an alternative to possible military action.

Today’s Birthdays

Jean-Paul Marat, French revolutionary (1743-1793); England’s Queen Victoria (1819-1901); Jan Smuts, South African prime minister and general (1870-1950); U Ne Win, military dictator of Burma (1911-2002); Joseph Brodsky, Russian-American poet and Nobel laureate (1940-1996); Bob Dylan, US singer (1941-); Tommy Chong, US comedian (1938-); Patti LaBelle, US singer (1944-); Jim Broadbent, British actor (1949-); Rosanne Cash, country singer (1955-); Kristin Scott Thomas, actress (1960-).

— AP and Jamaica Observer