This is the 2nd day of 2024. There are 364 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS

1906: Willis Carrier receives a US patent for the world’s first air conditioner.

1991: Sharon Pratt becomes the first black woman to head a city of Washington’s size and prominence when she is sworn in as mayor of Washington, DC.

OTHER EVENTS

1492: The leader of the last Arab stronghold in Spain surrenders to Spanish forces loyal to King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I.

1893: The US Postal Service issues its first-ever set of commemorative stamps (they honour the upcoming World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago).

1905: Japanese General Nogi receives a letter of surrender from Russian General Stoessel, thereby formally ending the Russo-Japanese War.

1921: Religious services are broadcast on radio for the first time as KDKA in Pittsburgh airs the regular Sunday service of the city’s Calvary Episcopal Church.

1935: Bruno Hauptmann goes on trial in New Jersey on charges of kidnapping and murdering the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh; he is later found guilty and executed.

1955: President Jose Antonio Remon Cantera of Panama is assassinated at a racetrack.

1974: President Richard Nixon signs legislation requiring states to limit highway speeds to 55 miles (to conserve gasoline in the face of an Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries oil embargo); the 55 mph limit is phased out in 1987 and federal speed limits abolished in 1995.

1976: The Soviet Union hardens its stance on emigration despite the 1975 Helsinki Agreement to permit freer movement of people and ideas in Europe.

1983: The musical Annie closes on Broadway in New York after a run of 2,377 performances.

1992: Military commanders in Croatia agree to stop fighting within 24 hours to allow the dispatch of up to 10,000 UN peacekeepers.

1999: Rebel forces shoot down a UN cargo plane with eight people aboard, in Angola’s highland war zone.

2001: The first legal and direct crossing of ships in more than 50 years takes place between mainland China and Taiwanese territory.

2002: Veteran politician Eduardo Duhalde becomes Argentina’s fifth president in two weeks as he takes on the burden of a US$132-billion public debt.

2006: The roof of an ice rink in Germany collapses after heavy snowfall in a Bavarian Alps town, killing 15 people and injuring dozens.

2008: A mob torches a church in Kenya’s Rift Valley city of Eldoret where hundreds had sought refuge; witnesses say dozens of people — including children — are burned alive or hacked to death with machetes, in ethnic violence that followed Kenya’s disputed election.

2009: Maria de Jesus, believed to be the oldest living person in the world, dies at the age of 115 in Portugal.

2010: Defiant Afghan lawmakers reject 17 of President Hamid Karzai’s 24 Cabinet nominees, including a powerful warlord and the country’s only woman minister.

2012: Tens of thousands of protesters jeer Hungarian leaders as they hail the country’s brand new constitution, accusing the Government of exerting control over everything from the media to the economy and religion.

2013: The United Nations says Syria’s civil war death toll has exceeded 60,000 in 21 months.

2014: The New York Times and Guardian newspapers call for clemency for Edward Snowden, saying that the espionage worker-turned-privacy advocate should be praised rather than punished for his disclosures.

2017: US House Republicans vote to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics but public uproar forces them to back down the next day.

2018: WHO reveals it will classify gaming addiction as a mental health condition in its next International Classification of Diseases.

2019: United States international Christian Pulisic becomes the most expensive American soccer player when he moves from Borussia Dortmund to Chelsea for £57.6m (US$73m).

2023: Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin collapses in cardiac arrest but is revived by CPR on the field during a televised NFL game in Cincinnati.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Nouri Said, Iraqi prime minister (1888-1958); Michael Tippett, English musician (1905-1998); Isaac Asimov, Russian-born writer (1920-1992); Melville “Mel” Spence, Jamaican former Olympian in the 1956 and 1964 Summer Games (1936-2012); Taye Diggs, US actor (1971- ); Ben Hardy, English actor (X-Men: Apocalypse) (1991- ); Josh Taylor, Scottish boxer (1991- )

AP/Jamaica Observer