Today is the 162nd day of 2024. There are 204 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1940: Jamaican-born pan-African nationalist Marcus Garvey dies in London at 52.

OTHER EVENTS

1190: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I (Frederick Barbarossa) drowns while trying to cross the Saleph River on the Third Crusade to the Holy Land.

1692: Bridget Bishop becomes the first person to be hanged during the Salem witch trials in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, found guilty of “certaine detestable arts called witchcraft and sorceries”.

1786: A landslide dam on the Dadu River, caused by earthquake 10 days earlier, collapses and kills 100,000 in the Sichuan province of China.

1865: Tristan und Isolde, the earliest example of what Richard Wagner called music drama, is first performed; it becomes the greatest German opera of the late 19th century.

1868: Serbian Prince Michael III is assassinated, derailing the Balkan League’s plans for a coordinated rebellion against the Ottomans and destroying the league.

1916: The Great Arab Revolt begins against the ruling Ottoman Turks.

1935: Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio, by Dr Robert Holbrook Smith and William Griffith Wilson.

1942: The German SS (Gestapo) kills the 172 male residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia; deports the women to concentration camps; and places all children in “educational institutions” — completely wiping out the Czech village in retaliation, Berlin said, for the assassination of deputy SS leader Reinhard Heydrich because the local population gave asylum to his killers.

1944: Germans kill 642 inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane, France, in retaliation for a resistance attack; only 10 villagers survive but in 1953, 21 of the 200 SS perpetrators are brought to trial.

1956: Several rebels are summarily executed as Argentine navy and air force planes crush an attempted Peronista counter-revolution.

1957: The US Supreme Court, by vote of six to two, rules the military trials of two women who had been convicted of killing their servicemen husbands overseas are unconstitutional.

1963: The US Equal Pay Act is signed into law by President John F Kennedy.

1971: The US lifts its 21-year-old embargo on trade with China.

1977: Apple Computer ships its first Apple II computers.

1987: In local elections throughout Spain the Socialist Party of Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez loses outright control of Madrid, Valencia, Salamanca, and 18 other major cities; the vote is seen as a reflection of widespread dissatisfaction with the Government’s economic policies and programme of austerity, in particular.

1991: Eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard of South Lake Tahoe, California, is abducted by Phillip and Nancy Garrido; Jaycee is held by the couple for 18 years before she is found by authorities.

1994: In one incident of the Rwandan genocide, Hutu militiamen massacre 170 people hiding in a Roman Catholic church.

1997: Top Khmer Rouge Lieutenant Son Sen and his family are executed on the orders of leader Pol Pot; this later leads to a coup against Pol Pot.

1999: Yugoslav troops begin pulling out of Kosovo and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) suspends its punishing, 78-day, air war.

2004: Singer-musician Ray Charles dies in Beverly Hills, California, at age 73.

2007: Taliban militants launch a barrage of rockets on President Hamid Karzai as he speaks with elders in central Afghanistan, narrowly missing him — the third attempt on Karzai’s life since he became president.

2008: The chief of Saddam Hussein’s tribal clan is killed by a bomb glued to the undercarriage of his car; Sheik Ali al-Nida, 65, was the leader of the al-Bu Nasir tribe, a large Sunni Arab clan of about 20,000 members, including Saddam’s family.

2009: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi hails a new era in relations with Italy on arrival in Rome, saying a history of hatred and destruction during 30 years of colonial rule has been replaced by a future of friendship and cooperation. James Wenneker von Brunn, 88, opens fire inside the US Holocaust Museum and shoots dead Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns of the Museum Special Police.

2010: Pope Benedict XVI strongly defends celibacy for priests as a sign of faith in an increasingly secular world, during a rally that draws some 15,000 priests from around the world to Rome.

2012: Opposition Leader Henri Capriles marches through the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, accompanied by hundreds of thousands of supporters, as he formerly launches his campaign to run against President Hugo Chavez.

2015: Pope Francis takes the biggest step yet in cracking down on bishops who covered up for priests who raped and molested children, creating a new tribunal inside the Vatican to hear cases of bishops accused of failing to protect their flocks.

2020: Cameroon’s conflict with English-speaking separatists is rated the world’s most-neglected conflict, according to Norwegian Refugee Council.

2023: In the UEFA Champions League final, Manchester City beats Inter Milan with a 1-0 scoreline to complete a historic Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup treble.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Nikolaus August Otto, German developer of the internal combustion engine (1832-1891); Henry Stanley, British-American journalist and explorer (1840-1904); Saul Bellow, US novelist and Nobel laureate (1915-2005); Maxi Priest, British reggae/dancehall singer (1961- )

– AP/Jamaica Observer