Today is the 148th day of 2024. There are 218 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1937: The Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County, California, is opened to pedestrian traffic (vehicles begin crossing the next day).

OTHER EVENTS

1647: The first recorded American execution of a witch takes place in Salem, Massachusetts.

1703: Saint Petersburg (Leningrad) founded by Russian Tsar Peter the Great.

1896: A tornado strikes St Louis and East St Louis, Illinois, killing 255 people.

1905: Japanese annihilate Russian Baltic fleet of 35 ships in Tsushima Straits off Korea, ending the Russo-Japanese war and forcing the European powers to treat Japan as an equal.

1930: The 1,046-foot (319-metre) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public.

1933: The Chicago World’s Fair, celebrating ‘A Century of Progress’, officially opens. Walt Disney’s Academy Award-winning animated short The Three Little Pigs is first released.

1935: The US Supreme Court, in Schechter Poultry Corp v United States, unanimously strikes down the National Industrial Recovery Act, a key component of President Franklin D Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ legislative programme.

1936: The Cunard liner
RMS Queen Mary leaves England on its maiden voyage to New York. The first Aer Lingus flight takes place as a de Havilland Dragon carried five passengers from Dublin to Bristol, England.

1939: Ship carrying 937 Jewish refugees, fleeing Nazi Germany, is turned away in Cuba.

1941: German battleship Bismarck is sunk by British Navy off France in World War II, with loss of 2,300 lives.

1942: Navy Cook 3rd Class Doris “Dorie” Miller becomes the first African American to receive the Navy Cross for his “extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety” during Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour.

1971: Soviet Union signs 15-year pact with Egypt, pledging assistance in recovery of all Arab territories occupied by Israel.

1979: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin announce the opening of the border between Egypt and Israel.

1985: In Beijing, representatives of Britain and China exchange instruments of ratification for an accord returning Hong Kong to Chinese control in 1997.

1990: More than 72 per cent of Myanmar’s eligible voters turn out to elect a new Parliament. The military never allows it to convene, and continues to rule the country, as they have since overthrowing the last democratic Government in a 1962 coup.

1991: Kuwait’s Opposition leaders meet with the emir to demand that the constitution be restored and an end to martial law imposed after Iraq invaded the country.

1996: Russian President Boris Yeltsin negotiates a ceasefire to the war in Chechnya in his first meeting with the rebels’ leader.

1998: Japan’s Emperor Akihito speaks sympathetically of the suffering of Britain’s former World War II POWs as they protest his visit to England.

1999: The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands, announces the indictment of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four of his aides for war crimes in Kosovo. It is the first time a sitting head of state is indicted for war crimes.

2000: Northern Ireland’s major Protestant party narrowly votes to revive a power-sharing Government with Catholics, the key goal of the province’s 1998 peace agreement.

2001: Occupants of Kariwa, a Japanese village, home to the world’s largest nuclear power plant, vote against a proposal to use recycled plutonium at the facility. The referendum was the first-ever on one of Japan’s most contentious energy policies.

2002: Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf delivers a nationally televised address on the threat of war with India over Kashmir. India has 750,000 troops on the border and Pakistan has 250,000.

2006: Gay rights activists are pummelled by right-wing protesters and detained by police to prevent them from mounting a gay pride parade in Moscow in defiance of a city ban. A massive earthquake devastates parts of Java, Indonesia, killing about 6,000 people and leaving 1.5 million homeless.

2007: US and Iraqi forces free 42 kidnapped Iraqis — some of whom had been hung from ceilings and tortured for months — in a raid on an al-Qaeda hideout north of Baghdad.

2009: North Korea threatens military strikes on US, South Korean ships and renounces a 1953 truce agreement halting the Korean war fighting, an escalation of tensions in the wake of Pyongyang’s nuclear test.

2010: US activist Lori Berenson walks out of prison in Peru smiling but gets a chilly reception from her new neighbours after serving three-quarters of a 20-year sentence for aiding leftist rebels.

2011: Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic is captured in a routine raid as he headed out to his garden for a pre-dawn walk in the tiny northern Serbian village of Lazarevo.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Ibn Khaldun, Arab historian (1332-1406); Wild Bill Hickok, US sheriff (1837-1876); Cornelius Vanderbilt, US shipping/railroad magnate (1794-1877); Isadora Duncan, US dancer (1878-1927); Rachel Carson, US biologist/writer (1907-1964); Vincent Price, US actor (1911-1993); Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state (1923-2023); Pat Cash, Australian tennis champion (1965-); Jamie Oliver, British TV chef (1975- ); Paul Bettany, British actor (1971- ); Andre 3000, US rapper (1975- )

— AP