This is the 325th day of 2022. There are 40 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1845: The first railway is opened, operated by the Jamaica Railway Company. The railway is 14 miles long and runs from Kingston to Spanish Town.

OTHER EVENTS

164 BC: During the Maccabbean revolt Judas Maccabaeus recaptures Jersusalem and rededicates the Second Temple, commemorated since then as the Jewish festival Hanukkah.

1620: Forty-one male passengers on the Mayflower sign the Mayflower Compact by which they agree to abide by the laws of the new government they would establish; that Mayflower ship, carrying the first permanent European settlers to New England, lands in what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA.

1783: The first manned balloon flight sails over Paris for 25 minutes.

1789: North Carolina becomes the 12th state to ratify the US Constitution.

1806: The Continental System, a blockade designed to close the entire European continent to British trade, is proclaimed when Napoleon issues the Berlin Decree.

1877: American Thomas A Edison announces the invention of the phonograph.

1878: Lord Lytton, the viceroy of India, launches the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

1906: China prohibits the opium trade.

1920: On “Bloody Sunday” the Irish Republican Army kills 11 Englishmen suspected of being intelligence agents; the Black and Tans take revenge the same afternoon, attacking spectators and players at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, Dublin, killing 12 and wounding 60.

1922: Rebecca L Felton of Georgia is sworn in as the first woman to serve in the US Senate; her term, the result of an interim appointment, ends the following day as Walter F George, the winner of a special election, took office.

1958: A Soviet-East German commission meets in East Berlin to discuss an end to the occupation status in Berlin and the transfer of Soviet functions to East German control.

1962: China agrees to a ceasefire on the India-China border.

1963: The Roman Catholic Vatican Council authorises use of the vernacular instead of Latin in the Sacraments.

1964: The Verrazzano (originally Verrazano) Narrows Bridge, spanning New York Harbor from Brooklyn to Staten Island, opens to traffic.

1969: The Senate votes down the Supreme Court nomination of Clement F Haynsworth, 55-45 — the first such rejection since 1930.

1973: President Richard Nixon’s attorney, J Fred Buzhardt, reveals the existence of an 18 1/2-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate.

1974: Bombs explode at a pair of pubs in Birmingham, England, killing 21 people. (Six suspects were convicted of the attack but the convictions of the so-called Birmingham Six were overturned in 1991.)

1976: Rocky, directed by John G Avildsen and starring Sylvester Stallone, premieres in New York. it wins Best Picture in 1977. The Syrian army completes the final phase of its occupation of Lebanon.

1977: An estimated 3,000 people are believed to have perished in a cyclone that strikes south-eastern India, submerging entire villages in tidal waves.

1980: A fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas kills 87 people. An estimated 83 million TV viewers tune in to the CBS prime-time soap opera Dallas to find out “who shot J R”. (The shooter turned out to be J R Ewing’s sister-in-law, Kristin Shepard.)

1985: Former US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard is arrested and accused of spying for Israel; he pleads guilty and is sentenced to life in prison.

1987: Riot police stand guard to prevent violence by rival supporters as presidential candidates in South Korea trade charges of corruption and cruelty.

1990: Michael R Milken, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc’s former “junk-bond” chief, is sentenced to 10 years in prison; it is the most severe sentence handed down in a series of Wall Street securities fraud cases dating from 1986.

1991: The UN Security Council chooses Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt to be the new secretary general.

1993: Best known for his role as scientist Dr David Banner on the CBS sci-fi drama series The Incredible Hulk and also starring in television series such as My Favorite Martian, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, and The Magician, actor Bill Bixby (Wilfred Bailey Everett Bixby III) dies this day of prostate cancer at the age of 59.

1994: NATO retaliates for repeated Serb attacks on a UN safe haven by bombing an airfield in a Serb-controlled section of Croatia.

1995: A peace agreement known as the Dayton Accords is reached by the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, ending the Bosnian War. Former Nazi Captain Erich Priebke is extradited from Argentina to Italy to face charges in the massacre of 335 Italian civilians in Nazi-occupied Rome.

1996: Thirty-three people are killed and more than 100 injured when an explosion blamed on leaking gas rips through a six-storey building in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1998: Italian officials release Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan, head of main Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party,

1999: China successfully completes an unmanned spacecraft test, a breakthrough leading toward China eventually becoming the third country to put humans in space, after the United States and the former Soviet Union.

2000: Research published in a British medical journal shows children who use mobile phones risk suffering memory loss, sleeping disorders and headaches; the study says those younger than 18 are more vulnerable to cellphone radiation because their immune systems are less robust.

2001: Maoist rebel leaders in Nepal withdraw from their four-month-old ceasefire with the Government and launch their worst-ever attacks, killing more than 200 people.

2002: A North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit meeting in Prague extends an official invitation to become new alliance members to Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

2003: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says an outbreak of hepatitis A that killed three people and left 605 sick in Monaca, Pennsylvania, was caused by tainted scallions imported from Mexico.

2004: A strong earthquake rocks the Caribbean islands of Dominica and Guadeloupe, killing at least one person and destroying numerous homes.

2005: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warns that Sudan’s volatile Darfur region faces an increasing threat of complete lawlessness and anarchy, and says it is crucial that the Government and rebels conclude a peace agreement by the end of the year.

2006: Pierre Gemayel, an anti-Syrian politician and scion of Lebanon’s most prominent Christian family, is gunned down in a carefully orchestrated assassination that heightens tensions between the US-backed Government and the militant Hezbollah.

2007: Costa Rican President Oscar Arias signs into law a free trade agreement with the country’s Central American neighbours, the United States and the Dominican Republic.

2008: Somali pirates release a hijacked, Greek-owned tanker, MV Genius, with all 19 crew members safe and the oil cargo intact, after payment of a ransom.

2009: After offering a home in his church to disaffected Anglicans, Pope Benedict XVI assures the archbishop of Canterbury he is still committed to seeking closer relations between Roman Catholics and Anglicans.

2011: Thwarted internationally, the Barack Obama Administration cobbles together a new set of best-available sanctions against Iran that underline its limited capacity to force Tehran to halt its suspected nuclear weapons programme. The US action is coordinated with Britain and Canada.

2017: Robert Mugabe’s resignation after 37 years in power is read out in Zimbabwe’s parliaments during impeachment proceedings.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Carlo Fragoni, Italian poet (1692-1768); Voltaire, French poet-philosopher (1694-1778); Belgian artist René Magritte, one of the most prominent Surrealist painters (1898-1967); Bjork, Icelandic actress-singer (1965- ); Goldie Hawn, US actress (1945- )

— AP/ Jamaica Observer