Today is the 309th day of 2024. There are 57 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1982: Jamaica’s HEART Trust (since renamed HEART Trust/NTA, now HEART/NSTA Trust) is officially launched.

OTHER EVENTS

1429: Joan of Arc and Charles d’Albret liberate the heavily fortified town of Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier after a siege.

1529: English cardinal Thomas Wolsey is arrested on charges of treason.

1646: Massachusetts uses the death penalty as punishment for denying that the
Holy Bible is God’s word.

1841: The first wagon train arrives in California.

1862: American inventor Richard Jordan Gatling patents the hand-cranked Gatling machine gun in Indianapolis.

1879: African American inventor Thomas Elkins patents the rafrigerating apparatus. James Ritty patents the first cash register, to combat stealing by bartenders in his saloon in Dayton, Ohio.

1908: The Brooklyn Academy of Music opens in New York City.

1914: Vogue holds its first model show, Fashion Fete, in New York City.

1921: Japan’s Premier Takashi Hara is assassinated.

1922: British archaeologist Howard Carter discovers the entrance to the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh King Tutankhamen, in Egypt.

1924: California legalises professional boxing, which had been illegal since 1914.

1939: The United States modifies its neutrality stance in World War II by allowing “cash and carry” purchases of arms by belligerents — a policy favouring Britain and France.

1940: American author and journalist of
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway divorces his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer.

1944: The Allies announce that Greece has been liberated from German Nazis in World War II.

1946: UNESCO is officially established as its constitution enters into force; this specialised agency of the United Nations calls for the promotion of international collaboration in education, science, and culture.

1963: John Lennon utters his infamous line at a ‘Royal Variety Performance’, “Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And for the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery…” in London.

1976: Britain proposes Rhodesian independence under black majority rule by March 1, 1978.

1980: Conservative Republican Ronald Reagan is elected the 40th president of the United States.

1984: About 1,000 Sikhs, battered by Hindus outraged over the assassination of India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, take refuge in the Sis Ganj shrine.

1991: Former First Lady Imelda Marcos returns to the Philippines, ending more than five years of exile in the US; her arrival follows the Government’s decision to endorse her return so that she could be tried on corruption and tax-evasion charges.

1993: Thousands of people who received transfusions demand AIDS tests, terrified they may have been given tainted blood from a company in Germany that was accused of improper testing.

1995: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, co-recipient with Shimon Peres and Yãsir Arafãt of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994, is assassinated by a Jewish extremist as he leaves a pro-peace rally in Tel Aviv.

1997: The United States announces its purchase of 21 MiG-29 jet fighters from former Soviet republics to prevent the advanced planes from ending up in Iran.

1999: Aaron McKinney, who beat gay college student Matthew Shepard and left him to die on the Wyoming prairie, avoids the death penalty by agreeing to serve life in prison without parole and promising never to appeal his conviction.

2000: Amalia Hernandez, Mexican folk dancer, choreographer, and founder of the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico, dies in Mexico City, Mexico, at age 83.

2001: Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Damascus, Syria, condemn Osama bin Laden, the fugitive believed to have masterminded the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

2003: Wal-Mart Stores Inc is placed under investigation by a federal grand jury for its role in employing illegal immigrants; earlier, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided 61 Wal-Mart stores in 21 states, arresting around 250 illegally employed cleaning workers in the largest mass immigration raid in years.

2005: Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf suspends a major purchase of US fighter planes, explaining that the money is needed for recovery from a recent earthquake.

2006: The 1996 Summer Olympics gold-medallist gymnast Dominique Moceanu, at 25 years old, weds 29-year-old podiatrist Dr Michael Canales in Houston, Texas.

2008: Barack Obama is elected the first black president of the United States.

2009: R&B singer Usher, at 30, divorces 38-year-old hairstylist and wardrobe stylist Tameka Foster due to an irretrievably broken marriage, after two years.

2010: A small package bomb is delivered to the French embassy in Athens; the Greek Government charges two people in connection with the mailings.

2013: In Tehran’s largest anti-US rally in years, tens of thousands of demonstrators join in chants of “Death to America” as hardliners direct a major show of resolve against President Hassan Rouhani’s outreach to Washington.

2014: In midterm elections in the US, the Republican Party wins control of the Senate and gains additional seats in the House of Representatives, where it already held the majority; also, ballot initiatives result in the approval of the legalisation of marijuana for recreational use in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, DC.

2015: Melissa Mathison, American screenwriter for the movie E.T., dies of cancer at 65.

2017: Gilbert Rogin, American journalist and author of The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, dies at 87.

2018: Camila Cabello wins four awards at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Bilbao; Janet Jackson accepts the Global Icon award.

2019: Nine members of a US Mexican Mormon family, including six children, are shot and killed in an attack by a criminal gang in northern Mexico.

2020: Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed orders a military offensive and state of emergency in the northern region of Tigray, amid fears of a civil war.

2021: COP26 climate pledges, if kept, could help limit global warming to 1.8 °C (above pre-industrial averages), according to International Energy Agency.

2022: Astronomers announce the discovery of the closest known black hole to Earth, just 1,600 light years away; it is 10 times more massive than our sun.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

British scientist Joseph Rotblat, a leading critic of nuclear weapons (1908-2005); Walter Cronkite, US newsman (1916-2009); Oliver Samuels, Jamaica’s “King of Comedy” (1948- ); Tony Abbott, prime minister of Australia (1957- ); Sean “Diddy” Combs, US rapper/producer (1969- ); Matthew McConaughey, American actor (1969- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer