Today is the 323rd day of 2024. There are 43 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1993: Nigeria’s new military ruler, General Sani Abacha, dissolves all democratic institutions.

OTHER EVENTS

1477: William Caxton, a pioneering English printer, publishes Dictes and Sayenges of the Phylosophers, the first dated book printed in England.

1666: The French capture Antigua, West Indies, from the British.

1820: US Navy Captain Nathaniel Palmer discovers the frozen continent of Antarctica.

1883: The United States and Canada adopt a system of standard time zones.

1910: The Mexican Revolution breaks out, lasting 10 years and killing more than one million people.

1928: Mickey Mouse makes his debut in the United States, in the first successful sound-synchronised cartoon, Steamboat Willie.

1958: King Mohammed V calls for the “total and unconditional” withdrawal of US military bases, French and Spanish troops from Moroccan territory, saying their presence is a menace to Morocco’s independence.

1966: US Roman Catholic bishops do away with the rule against eating meat on Fridays.

1976: Spain’s Parliament approves a Bill to establish a democracy, after 37 years of dictatorship.

1978: A total of 912 people die in Jonestown, Guyana, after People’s Temple cult leader Jim Jones convinces most followers to kill themselves by drinking cyanide-laced punch; others are shot to death or forcibly poisoned.

1987: A lawyers’ group reports systematic genocide, torture, and the use of chemical weapons by Soviet and allied troops in Afghanistan.

1996: Russia’s new space probe to Mars fails shortly after blast-off and comes crashing back into the Pacific Ocean near Easter Island.

1999: Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia sign a deal to build a US$2.4-billion pipeline that would move oil from the Caspian Sea to international markets, without going through Russia or Iran.

2001: A Spanish investigative judge charges eight men with belonging to the al-Qaeda terror network.

2005: Two bombs are found planted at branches of a Spanish-owned bank on the outskirts of Mexico City — the latest in a series of attacks against foreign financial institutions in the area in recent years.

2007: A methane blast rips through a coal mine in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 70 miners.

2008: Belgium-based InBev SA forms the world’s largest brewer with its euro-41-billion (US$52- billion) takeover of US-based Anheuser-Busch Cos Inc.

2009: A US federal judge rules that the failure of the Army Corps of Engineers to properly maintain a navigation channel was a cause of catastrophic flooding in New Orleans after the city was hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2004.

2011: Tens of thousands of Islamists and young activists amass in Tahrir Square, confronting Egypt’s ruling military council with the largest crowd in months to protest the general’s attempt to give themselves special powers over a future elected government.

2013: Toronto’s city council votes to strip scandal-plagued Mayor Rob Ford of many of his powers following a heated debate in which he knocked over a female councillor.

2014: Israel vows harsh retaliation for a Palestinian attack that killed five people in a Jerusalem synagogue.

2015: Two female suicide bombers, aged 18 and 11, blow, themselves up in Kano, Nigeria, killing 15 and injuring over 100.

2017: Shawn Mendes becomes the first singer under age 18 to get three number one singles on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart.

2018: American missionary John Allen Chau is killed on forbidden North Sentinel Island, Bay of Bengal, by one of the world’s most isolated tribe.

2019: A book written by Charlotte Bronte, at age 14, for her toy soldiers is bought by Bronte Society for €600,000 at auction in Paris. World wind speeds have risen, three times faster since 2010 than in previous decades of decline, according to a Princeton study published in Nature Climate Change
.

2020: Thailand’s Parliament agrees to reforms, but not for the monarchy, after massive public protests were met by tear gas and water canons. Floods and landslides affect more than three million people, killing at least 70 in the wake of Typhoon Vamco in Cagayan Province, Philippines.

2021: A US judge exonerates Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam for the killing of Malcolm X in 1965, saying , after 55 years, that they were “wrongly convicted”.

2022: Aleksandr Gorshkov, Russian ice dancer who won World Championship gold six times and Olympic gold for USSR in 1976 with Lyudmila Pakhomova, dies at 76.

2023: Henning Munk Jensen, Danish soccer defender — 62 caps; 392 games with Aalborg BK; Danish Player of the Year 1968 — dies at 76.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Carl Maria von Weber, German composer (1786-1826); Louis Daguerre, French photographic pioneer (1787-1851); Ignacy Jan Paderewski, musician and first prime minister of Poland (1860-1941); Amelita Galli-Curci, Italian opera star (1890-1963); Sister Mary Ignatius Davies, Jamaican Sister of Mercy, mentor, teacher, musicologist, and known for her work with Alpa Boys’ School (now Alpha Institute) (1921-2003); Owen Wilson, US actor (1968- )

– AP/ Jamaica Observer