Today is the 339th day of 2024. There are 27 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1977: West Indies win the first World Series Cricket Test against Australia at VFL Park in Melbourne by three wickets; chasing 235 for victory, Viv Richards with 56 and Clive Lloyd on 44 guide the West Indies to 237/7 with two days to spare.

OTHER EVENTS

1791: Britain’s The Observer is first published, the oldest Sunday newspaper in the world.

1833: The American Anti-Slavery Society is formed by Arthur Tappan in Philadelphia.

1906: Alpha Phi Alpha, the first black Greek letter fraternity, forms.

1933: Jack Kirkland’s play Tobacco Road premieres in NYC, became the longest-running play of its time.

1947: A Government Bill providing heavy penalties for sabotage and strikes is approved by a 413-183 vote in the French national assembly.

1956: An impromptu recording session by the “Million-Dollar Quartet” of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash takes place at Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee.

1966: At least eight persons are killed in the Portuguese colony of Macao during three days of rioting in protest against alleged police brutality toward Chinese.

1973: US truck drivers begin blocking key highways to protest the effects rising fuel costs and lower speed limits will have on their incomes.

1980: UNESCO issues a report stating that one third of the world’s population can neither read nor write.

1989: Howard Beach: Making A Case for Murder, based on the December 1986 murders of black youth by white youth in New York City, premieres on NBC.

2001: At the 12th Billboard Music Awards Jamaican Shaggy wins.

2007: Milan’s Brazilian midfielder Kaká is named best football player in the world, in the first year in which players from clubs outside the UEFA federation become eligible for nomination for the Ballon d’Or.

2009: Ground is broken on a project to raise the Tamiami Trail highway — which prevents the flow of water from Lake Okeechobee into the Everglades — between Tampa and Miami in southern Florida above the wetlands of the Everglades, a key part of restoration of the ecosystem.

2017: New York’s Metropolitan Opera suspends conductor James Levine following allegations of sexual misconduct.

2022: Sonny Holland, American college football coach (Montana State University 1971-77), dies from Parkinson’s disease at 84.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Crazy Horse, chief of the Oglala band of Lakota (Teton or Western Sioux), able tactician, determined warrior in the Sioux resistance to European Americans’ invasion of the northern Great Plains (1840-1877); Francisco Franco, ruler of Spain (1892-1975); Richard Hardware, Jamaican 1972 Olympian for the 200m (1950- )

– AP/Jamaica Observer