This Day in History – April 26
Today is the 117th day of 2024. There are 249 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2002: The UN Commission on Human Rights, in its annual review of human rights, censures Cuba’s human rights policies but drops official condemnations of Russia and Iran.
OTHER EVENTS
1777: During the American Revolutionary War, 16-year-old Sybil Ludington, the daughter of a militia commander in Dutchess County, New York, rides her horse into the night to alert her father’s men of the approach of British regular troops.
1933:
Nazi Germany’s infamous secret police, the Gestapo, is created.
1968: The United States explodes a 1.3-megaton nuclear device called Boxcar beneath the Nevada desert .
1975: Queen Elizabeth stays at King’s House, Jamaica, while she attends the third Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference.
1994: Voting begins in South Africa’s first all-race elections, resulting in victory for African National Congress and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president.
2000: Vermont Governor Howard Dean signs the United States’s first Bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
2007: Jack Valenti — the long-time president of Motion Picture Association of America who created the film-rating system that assigns labels for audience suitability (PG-13, R, etc) — dies at age 85.
2010: Gunmen shoot and kill a Nigerian journalist at his home on the same day two others die while attempting to cover fighting between Christians and Muslims in the nation’s restive central highlands.
2011: Syrian forces heap more punishment on residents of restive towns, even shooting holes in rooftop water tanks in a region parched by drought.
2021: Kanye West’s Nike Air Yeezy 1 Prototype trainers sell for a record US$1.8 million in a private sale at Sotheby’s.
2023: The Brazilian-Portuguese Michaelis dictionary adds “pelé” as a new adjective to its online edition, meaning “exceptional, incomparable, unique”.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, engineer, sculptor and architect (1452-1519); Albert Lawrence, Jamaican sprint relay silver medallist at the 1984 Olympics (1961- ); Jet Li, actor (1963- ); T-Boz, rapper of TLC (1970- ); former First Lady Melania Trump (1970- ); Novlene Williams-Mills, Jamaican multiple Olympic and World Championships medallist (1982- )
– AP/Jamaica Observer
