Today is the 260th day of 2024. There are 106 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1994: A federal court jury in Anchorage, Alaska, orders Exxon Corp to pay US$5 billion in punitive damages to Alaskan fishermen and natives for the March 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

OTHER EVENTS

1668: John II Casimir, facing a rebellion after a string of disastrous wars, abdicates as king of Poland and becomes an abbot in France.

1810: Mexicans begin their revolt against Spanish rule.

1913: Japan sends a flotilla to Yangtze River following China’s failure to honour a reparation agreement.

1955: Argentine President Juan Peron is ousted by a military coup during his second term in office and begins an 18-year exile.

1963: Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore form the Federation of Malaysia.

1967: UN Secretary General U Thant calls on the United States to halt its bombing of North Vietnam.

1970: A week-long “Black September” civil war starts in Jordan, with King Hussein declaring martial law and calling up troops to fight Palestinians.

1972: A monument to Jamaican Norman Washingtn Manley, designed by H D Repole, is dedicated.

1974: US President Gerald Ford announces a conditional amnesty programme for Vietnam War deserters and draft evaders.

1975: Papua New Guinea, previously under Australian Administration, becomes an independent nation.

1978: A total of 25,000 die after an earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale hits the south-east region of Iran.

1979: Afghanistan’s President Nur Mohammed Taraki is overthrown in a coup headed by hard-line Communist Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin.

1987: Two dozen countries sign the Montreal Protocol, designed to reduce emission of gases that deplete the ozone layer by the year 2000.

1990: Iraq opens Kuwait’s borders and thousands of Kuwaitis attempt to flee their country.

1992: Russian and Cuban officials announce they came to an agreement on the withdrawal from Cuba of a 1,500-troop brigade stationed there by the former Soviet Union.

1995: In Mexico three military planes flying in formation crash during Mexican Independence Day festivities, killing six crew members.

1997: Apple Computer Inc names co-founder Steve Jobs as interim CEO.

2000: Sammy Sosa becomes the second player to hit 50 or more home runs in three consecutive years, joining Mark McGwire in this achievement.

2001: Typhoon Nari lashes northern Taiwan with fierce winds and torrential rain, shutting down schools, closing railway lines, and triggering landslides and flash flooding that kill nine people.

2002: Peace talks at a naval base in Sattahip, Thailand, open between the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebel army, in an attempt to end Sri Lanka’s 19-year-old civil war.

2004: The Mexican Government promises to give free homes to 47 mothers of women killed in a string of sexually motivated slayings in Ciudad Juarez, angering some who say the gifts gloss over the lack of results in the criminal investigations.

2006: The Vatican announces that Pope Benedict XVI “sincerely regrets” offending Muslims with his reference to an obscure medieval text that characterises some of the teachings of Islam’s founder as “evil and inhuman”.

2007: The budget One-Two-Go Airlines domestic flight OG269, carrying 123 passengers and seven crew members, crashes as it tries to land in pouring rain on Thailand’s resort island of Phuket; at least 90 people are killed, including 54 foreign tourists.

2009: Afghan officials issue full preliminary results showing President Hamid Karzai got 54.6 per cent of the vote in the previous month’s election.

2011: Ghanaian-born trader Kweku Adoboli is charged with fraud and false accounting while working for Swiss bank UBS in London’s financial district; he is believed to have run up losses of US$2 billion.

2013: UN inspectors say there is “clear and convincing evidence” that chemical weapons were used on a relatively large scale in an attack the prior month in Syria that killed hundreds of people.

2015: A total of 700 million malaria cases have been prevented in Africa since the year 2000, according to a report by University of Oxford in the Nature journal.

2016: American dramatist Edward Albee, an innovative writer of raw, stringent plays who was perhaps best known for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), dies at age 88.

2018: The first-ever performance of comedy Love’s Victory by Lady Mary Wroth takes place at Penshurst Place, England — 400 years after it was written. Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes sets an NFL record of 10 touchdowns in the first two weeks of a season.

2019: Marvel actor Mark Ruffalo rebuffs UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson who compared himself to Hulk, saying, “Boris Johnson forgets that the Hulk only fights for the good of the whole.”

2020: Barbados’s Prime Minister Mia Mottley announces the country’s intention to remove Queen Elizabeth II as its head of State and become a republic.

2021: Idaho Department of Health and Wellness says the whole state is now in a hospital resource crisis and it will thus ration health care, due to the COVID-19 surge.

2022: South Korean girl group Blackpink releases their second studio album Born Pink
— the first K-pop girl group to top the US Billboard chart.

2023: Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner is removed from Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s board of directors after disparaging remarks about female and black musicians.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

J C Penney, US entrepreneur (1875-1971); B B King, US blues musician (1925-2015); Marc Anthony, Latin/pop singer (1969- ).

— AP/ Jamaica Observer