TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2012: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc announces that it is ceasing publication of its print version — the oldest and longest continually published, English language, general print encyclopaedia.

OTHER EVENTS

1325: Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, is founded.

1567: Margaret of Parma, regent of the Netherlands, uses German mercenaries to annihilate 2,000 Calvinists.

1639: Harvard University is named for clergyman John Harvard.

1642: The marquis de Cinq-Mars, a favourite of King Louis XIII of France, signs a secret treaty with King Philip IV of Spain in a plot to overthrow Cardinal Richelieu.

1656: Jews are denied the right to build a synagogue in New Amsterdam.

1707: The Holy Roman Empire agrees to the Convention of Milan whereby French troops are to leave northern Italy.

1781: William Herschel sees what he thinks is a comet but is actually the discovery of the planet Uranus, just past the planet Saturn; it is the first of three planets to be sighted during the next two hundred years.

1790: John Martin, the first American-born actor, performs in Philadelphia.

1809: Shortly after Sweden surrenders Finland to Russia, Swedish King Gustav IV Adolf is overthrown.

1852: The Uncle Sam cartoon figure makes its debut in the New York Lantern weekly.

1865: Confederate President Jefferson Davis signs a Bill authorising the use of slaves as soldiers in the US Civil War.

1868: The impeachment trial of US President Andrew Johnson begins in the US Senate.

1869: The Arkansas legislature passes the anti-Ku Klux Klan law.

1877: American Chester Greenwood patents earmuffs after inventing them at age 15.

1881: Russia’s Czar Alexander II is assassinated by radical terrorists who demand a constitutional government in Russia; ironically, the czar had just signed a Bill to establish exactly what they wanted, but when he died so did the agreement.

1884: Using Greenwich, England, as the commencement point from which all time will be measured, an international time standard is adopted throughout the United States.

1894: J L Johnstone of England invents the horse racing starting gate.

1900: British forces under Frederick Roberts capture Bloemfontein, South Africa.

1925: The Tennessee legislature passes a Bill that bans the teaching of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in the state’s public schools; in a highly publicised trial, high school teacher John T Scopes is later convicted of breaking the law.

1930: Clyde Tombaugh announces the discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, USA.

1938: Austria is annexed by Germany a day after Nazi troops march in; the Anschluss, a political union between Austria and Germany, is announced.

1958: Meadowbrook High School is founded by The United Church in Cayman and the Cayman Islands.

1971: Quebec separatist Paul Rose is given a life sentence in Montreal, Canada, for his part in the kidnapping and murder of Quebec Labour Minister Pierre LaPorte.

1974: The Arab nations agree to end their five-month oil embargo on sales to the US, which sanction had crippled both the American industry and economy.

1986: Soviet cosmonauts Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyev are sent aloft aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to rendezvous with the space station Mir and become its first occupants.

1989: Christian army units and Syrian-backed Muslim militiamen shatter a ceasefire with a clash across Beirut’s dividing Green Line.

1991: Kuwait’s emir, Sheik Jeber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, returns from exile after his country is liberated from Iraqi occupation.

1992: A 6.2-magnitude earthquake rocks Turkey, claiming at least 570 lives.

1996: A gunman invades a primary school in the small Scottish town of Dunblane and shoots to death 16 young children and their teacher before turning a gun on himself; the school shooting results in various changes to British gun laws.

1997: A military cargo plane crashes in the mountains in north-eastern Iran, killing all 88 people on-board.

1998: South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, himself once imprisoned for his political beliefs, grants amnesty to some five million South Koreans, including six elderly political prisoners.

2003: The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy.

2004: Luciano Pavarotti performs his last opera, Tosca, at The Metropolitan Opera in New York.

2007: Somalia’s President Abdullahi Yusuf comes under mortar attack in his palace just hours after moving in upon his return from southern stronghold Baidoa; he escapes unharmed in the assault but seven people are killed, including a 12-year-old boy.

2008: Serbia’s president dissolves Parliament and calls an early election that should determine whether the country aligns itself with the European Union and other Western groups or returns to its isolationist past.

2010: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s political coalition takes an early vote lead in the election’s all-important battleground of Baghdad, pulling away from its two closest rivals in the latest indication that Iraqis want a moderate government.

2011: The estimated death toll from Japan’s natural disasters climbs past 10,000 as authorities race to combat the threat of multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns and hundreds of thousands of people struggle to find food and water.

2012: Former News International executive Rebekah Brooks and her racehorse trainer husband Charlie are arrested in dawn raids that also net four other suspects in a spreading phone-hacking scandal.

2013: Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina is elected pope, becoming the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium; he chooses the name Francis.

2014: Russia conducts new military manoeuvres near its border with Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin says the world should not blame his country for what he calls Ukraine’s “internal crisis”.

2019: The US grounds all Boeing 737 Max aircraft, after bans by others countries following the plane type’s second crash in Ethiopia.

2020: Breonna Taylor, an African American EMT, is killed by Louisville, Kentucky, police officers as they burst into her apartment during a botched raid; her death leads to massive protests by Black Lives Matter activists and others who call for police reform.

2021: American boxer “Marvellous” Marvin Hagler, a durable middleweight champion who was one of the greatest boxers of the 1970s and 80s, dies at age 66.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (1741-1790); Hugo Wolf, Austrian composer (1860-1903); George Seferis, Greek poet and diplomat, Nobel literature laureate (1900-1971); Kofi Awoonor, Ghanaian poet (1935-2013); Neil Sedaka, US singer (1939- ); Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet (1942-2008); Adam Clayton, English-born Irish musician and bassist with rock group U2 (1960- ); Albert W Stevens, American aerial photographer of first Earth curvature picture (taken 1930) and first photos of Moon’s shadow on Earth during solar eclipse (taken1932) (1886-1949)

– AP/Jamaica Observer