Today is the 281st day of 2024. There are 85 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2013: Former Greek defense minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos, together with 16 co-defendants, is found guilty on charges of having set up a money-laundering system to hide bribe money.

OTHER EVENTS

1571: In a naval engagement, allied Christian forces — an Austrian, Genovese and Venetian fleet — defeat the Turks in the Battle of Lepano during an Ottoman campaign to acquire Cyprus.

1765: The Stamp Act Congress convenes in New York to draw up colonial grievances against England.

1826: The first gravity-powered American railroad goes into operation, running from Quincy to Milton, Massachusetts, and carrying granite rock down to the waterfront.

1879: Britain invades Afghanistan.

1935: The League of Nations declares Italy an aggressor in Ethiopia.

1938: US State Dept. makes a public text of the note delivered to the Italian Government on October 5 which asks exemption of American Jews from anti-Semitic decrees, and implies retaliation in case the request is not recognised.

1954: Marian Anderson becomes the first black singer hired by the New York Metropolitan Opera House.

1958: President Iskander Nirza proclaims martial law in Pakistan.

1963: US President John F Kennedy signs nuclear test ban treaty between United States, Britain and Soviet Union.

In Jamaica, Hurricane Flora, one of the most destructive Atlantic storms, impacts Jamaica for a third day, causing grief and destruction.

1975: The Soviet Union and East Germany sign a revised treaty of “friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance”, eliminating all reference to the eventual unification of the two German states.

1982: The Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical Cats opens in New York, beginning its record run of 7,485 performances.

1992: Trade representatives from the United States, Canada and Mexico initial the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement in Texas.

1993: African National Congress (ANC) President Nelson Mandela and South African President F W de Klerk are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in dismantling apartheid and negotiating South Africa’s transition to a non-racial democracy.

1995: New York’s Central Park is transformed into a giant, open-air cathedral as Pope John Paul II celebrates mass before a flock of 250,000.

2000: Vojislav Kostunica takes the oath of office as Yugoslavia’s first popularly elected president, closing the turbulent era of Slobodan Milosevic.

2001: The United States and Britain launch a military attack on Osama bin Laden — prime suspect in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States — and his Taliban backers in Afghanistan.

2007: The UN’s highest court grants Honduras sovereignty over four Caribbean islands in its decades-old dispute with Nicaragua, and carves up rich fishing grounds and offshore exploration concessions for oil and gas. During an all-night arts festival in Paris, revellers break into Musee d’Orsay, and one punches a hole into 1874 painting The Argenteuil Bridge by impressionist Claude Monet.

2009: Egypt announces that its antiquities department has severed its relationship with the Louvre Museum in France because the Louvre has failed to return artefacts Egypt says were stolen from an Egyptian tomb; two days later the Louvre agrees that the pieces were stolen and says it will return them to Egypt. Pakistan’s powerful military rejects US attempts to link billions of dollars in foreign aid to increased monitoring of its anti-terror efforts, complicating American attempts to strike al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters on the Afghan border.

2010: The toxic red sludge that burst out of a Hungarian factory’s reservoir reaches the mighty Danube after wreaking havoc on smaller rivers and creeks; downstream nations rush to test their waters.

2012: President Hugo Chavez wins re-election and a new endorsement of his socialist project, after a bitter campaign in which the Opposition accused him of unfairly using Venezuela’s oil wealth and his near-total control of State institutions to his advantage.

2015: US President Barack Obama apologises to the Doctors without Borders president and the president of Afghanistan for the bombing of a hospital in Kunduz.

2016: Washington Post releases a videotape of Donald Trump boasting of groping and kissing women without consent.

2017: Rapper Nelly is arrested for rape in Auburn, Washington.

2018: A Romanian referendum to ban same-sex marriage fails, with only 20.4 per cent voting.

2019: The Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology is awarded to Peter Ratcliffe, William Kaelin and Gregg Semenza for discovering how cells sense oxygen.

2020: Hurricane Delta makes landfall on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula with 100-mph winds — the 25th named storm for 2020.

2023: Hamas launches a major air and ground attack on Israel from Gaza, killing over a thousand people and taking hundreds of hostages, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare: “We are at war.”

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Niels Bohr, Danish nuclear physicist and Nobel Prize winner (1885-1962); Desmond Tutu, Anglican archbishop in South Africa, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize (1931- 2021); Yo-Yo Ma, cellist (1955- ); Toni Braxton, US singer (1968- ); Simon Cowell, British producer/judge on TV’s American Idol (1959- )

– AP/ Jamaica Observer