Today is the 4th day of 2024. There are 362 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2021: Entrepreneur extraordinaire, founder of Sandals Resorts International, ATL and Jamaica Observer Media groups Gordon “Butch” Stewart dies.

OTHER EVENTS

1797: Napoleon Bonaparte defeats Austrians at Rivoli, Italy.

1885: The first successful appendectomy is performed in the United States.

1918: France’s former Premier Joseph Caillaux is arrested for treason after he opposes involvement in World War I. He is later found guilty of committing “damage to the external security of the state” but is pardoned and becomes finance minister.

1932: Indian Government introduces emergency powers as Indian National Congress is declared illegal and Mahatma Gandhi is arrested.

1938: British postpone plan for partition of Palestine.

1944: Allied forces launch attack east of Cassino, Italy, in World War II.

1948: Britain grants independence to Burma.

1961: Nationalist rebels attack Portuguese military and civil targets in Luanda, Angola, the opening shots in a 14-year colonial war.

1967: Britain’s proposal for an international peace conference to end the war in Vietnam is rejected by North Vietnam and by the National Liberation Front.

1973: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is robbed of US$2 million worth of art, including a Rembrandt valued at US$1 million.

1974: US President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over tape recordings and documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.

1983: The Colombian Government bans imports into Colombia of ether, acetone, hydrochloride and other chemicals needed to purify cocaine paste.

1990: Worst rail disaster in Pakistan’s history kills 307 people and wounds 700 when a passenger train crashes into stopped freight train in Sangi.

1994: The US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke approves a US$4.5-million grant for three institutions to measure the success of implanting fetal tissue into brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease.

1998: Swedish police arrest 314 people after violence erupts at a neo-Nazi concert outside Stockholm.

1999: Europe’s new currency, the euro, makes a strong debut on the financial markets.

2007: About 100,000 North Koreans rally in the communist country’s capital to defend their Government’s right to have nuclear weapons.

2008: DNA analysis indicates a three-year-old boy living in a Bogota foster home is the child of a woman held captive by leftist rebels for nearly six years. The results suggest that the leftist rebels misled the world when they promised to release the boy and his mother.

2012: Chile’s National Education Council decides to change the description of the country’s former military government from “dictatorship” to “regime” in school textbooks.

2013: The world’s largest and most powerful atom smasher goes into a two-year hibernation in March, as engineers carry out a revamp to help it reach maximum energy levels that could lead to more stunning discoveries following the detection of the so-called “God particle”.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Isaac Newton, English physicist (1643-1747); Jacob Grimm, German author (1785-1863); Louis Braille, French inventor of writing for the blind (1809-1852); Jane Wyman, US actress (1914-2007); Dyan Cannon, US actress (1937- ); Michael Stipe, US singer w/rock group R.E.M. (1960- ); Julia Ormond, British actress (1965- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer