Today is the 338th day of 338th. There are 27 days left in the year

TODAY’S HIGHGLIGHT

1950: Richard Hardware, Jamaican 1972 Olympian for the 200m, is born this day.

OTHER EVENTS

1619: A total of 38 colonists from Berkeley Parish, England, disembark in Virginia at the Berkley plantation and give thanks to God; this is considered by many to be the first Thanksgiving celebration in the Americas.

1829: Britain outlaws “suttee” in India, a Hindu practice wherein a widow burns herself to death on her husband’s funeral pyre.

1943: MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis announces any baseball club may sign Negroes.

1969: American civil rights leader Fred Hampton, a charismatic member of the Black Panthers, is shot and killed during a police raid in Chicago; his death causes public outrage, and the ensuing investigations bring greater scrutiny of the FBI’s attempts to dismantle the Panthers and other black organisations.

1980: The bodies of four American nuns slain in El Salvador two days earlier are found; five national guardsmen are later convicted of the murders.

1991: AP Middle East correspondent Terry Anderson is freed by Shiite Muslim captors in Lebanon after nearly seven years as a hostage.

1993: Farmers from Europe, India and Japan demonstrate in Geneva against “American imperialism” and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade accord, fearing it will ruin millions of farmers and uproot centuries-old traditions.

1997: Russian authorities say they will charge as a spy an American engineer who made land surveys in Russia.

1998: A Chinese entrepreneur is tried in Shanghai on charges of providing email addresses to an online democracy magazine.

2001: The ex-wife of former South African apartheid President F W de Klerk, Marike de Klerk, is found murdered in her home near Cape Town.

2006: The Guayana Shield region, a swath of Amazon rainforest, is placed under government protection, in a region infamous for violent conflicts among loggers, ranchers and environmentalists.

2008: Zimbabwe declares a national emergency over a cholera epidemic and the collapse of its health-care system.

2010: Spain places striking air traffic controllers under military authority and threatens them with jail terms, in an unprecedented emergency order to get planes back in the skies and clear chaotic airports clogged with irate travellers.

2012: A protest by at least 100,000 Egyptians outside the presidential palace in Cairo turns violent as tensions grow over Islamist President Mohammed Morsi’s seizure of nearly unrestricted powers and a draft constitution hurriedly adopted by his allies.

2013: A member of the inner circle of Hezbollah, Hassan al-Laqis, is assassinated in Beirut in the latest of a series of attacks against the Iranian-backed Shiite group whose open support of Syrian President Bashar Assad has enraged Sunnis. Xavier Bettel becomes Luxenberg’s first openly gay prime minister.

2015: Floods in Chennai and Tamil Nadu state, India, start receding after a month of heavy rainfall, leaving more 260 dead and thousands stranded.

2016: Tens of thousands march throughout Brazil against a vote to undermine anti-corruption investigations.

2017: The US Supreme Court allows President Trump’s travel ban to come into effect for six mostly Muslim countries.

2018: The first successful birth via a uterus transplanted from a deceased donor takes place in São Paulo, Brazil. French couture house Chanel ends its use of fur and exotic skins following bans by other companies. French President Emmanuel Macron drops his controversial rise in fuel tax after three weeks of mass protests.

2019: North American migratory birds are getting smaller and their wings wider due to climate change, according to study by University of Michigan published in the journal Ecology Letters.

2021: New Zealand cricket spin bowler Ajaz Patel (10-119) joins Jim Laker and Anil Kumble as the only three men to take all 10 wickets in a Test innings, on day two of the second Test against India in Mumbai.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Crazy Horse (1840-1877); Francisco Franco, ruler of Spain (1892-1975); Shawn Corey Carter (Jay-Z), American rapper (1968- ); Tyra Banks, actress and supermodel (1973- )

– AP/Jamaica Observer