Today is the 76th day of 2025. There are 289 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1937: Some 6,000 sit-down strikers defy a court injunction ordering evacuation of eight Chrysler plants in Detroit; Governor Frank Murphy warns the state might have to use force to restore respect for the courts and the public authorities.

OTHER EVENTS

180: Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who became a symbol in the West of the Golden Age of the Roman Empire, dies at the age of 58.

461: St Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, dies this day in 461, according to legend; his feast day is now celebrated widely in Ireland and the United States (US).

1861: In Turin, Italy, after more than 10 years of revolution led by such figures as Giuseppe Garibaldi, a Parliament is assembled and officially proclaims the unified Kingdom of Italy.

1905: Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, marries her distant cousin Franklin D Roosevelt, later US president.

1921: British activist Marie Stopes and her husband open the first birth control clinic in England — a London facility called the Mothers’ Clinic for Constructive Birth Control.

1938: The Mexican Government expropriates US$450,000,000 worth of properties for 17 American and British oil companies in Mexico.

1954: The 10th Inter-American Conference adopts, 19-0 (the US abstains) an Argentine resolution calling for the abolition of European rule in the Americas.

1958: The first solar-powered satellite, Vanguard 1, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida; the small satellite — weighing less than four pounds — stops transmitting in 1964.

1960: The United Nations (UN) Conference on the Law of the Sea opens at Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss the limits of territorial waters.

1962: USA President John F Kennedy is revealed to have proposed to Soviet Prime Minister Nikita S Khrushchev a five-point programme for cooperation in space exploration.

1970: The United States exercises its UN Security Council veto for the first time on a resolution to condemn the United Kingdom for not forcibly overthrowing the Rhodesian Government.

1971: Finnish Prime Minister Ahti Karjalainen announces the resignation of his Government after the Communist faction of the coalition votes against a Government Bill.

1978: The 230,000-ton Amoco Cadiz, carrying a capacity load of 1.6 million barrels of crude oil from the Persian Gulf to England, breaks in half in heavy seas, after striking rocks three miles off the coast of Brittany; strong winds and high-cresting waves drive the oil onto some 70 miles of Brittany’s beaches, damaging tourist and fishing industries in an accident blamed on a breakdown of the vessel’s steering equipment and the inability of a West German rescue tug to control the supertanker in turbulent seas. The resultant pollution is the worst such disaster in history.

1982: Four members of a Dutch television crew, filming a report in an area of El Salvador controlled by leftist guerrillas, are killed by government troops during a 40-minute firefight; five other journalists had lost their lives since 1980 while covering the civil war.

1985: Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney announces in Quebec that he and President Ronald Reagan have appointed members to a joint team that will study ways of solving the problem of acid rain; acid rain caused friction between the two countries as factories and power plants in the Midwestern United States were in large part responsible for fossil-fuel emissions believed to harm marine and plant life in both Canada and the north-eastern region of the United States.

1992: Nearly 69 per cent of white South African voters back F W de Klerk’s reforms — which include the repeal of racially discriminatory laws — and effectively endorse the dismantling of apartheid.

1995: The Azerbaijani army smashes a two-day rebellion by mutinous police in a fierce battle in Northern Baku.

1997: CNN begins Spanish broadcasts.

2000: A fire breaks out at the headquarters of doomsday cult, Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, in Kanungu, Uganda, and eventually leads to the discovery of more than 775 bodies, many of which had been poisoned; the cult’s leaders are believed to have killed their followers after a promised apocalypse did not occur.

2002: A grenade attack at a Protestant church near the US Embassy in the heavily guarded diplomatic enclave in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, kills five worshippers and wounds 40.

2004: George F R Ellis, a South African theoretical cosmologist, is named the winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities.

2005: The European Union decides to ban broadcasts by Al Manar, the satellite television channel run by Lebanese militant group Hezbollah..

2006: President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia tells the UN Security Council she has formally requested that Nigeria extradite former Liberian President Charles Taylor to face a war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone; Taylor is in exile in Nigeria under the terms of an international agreement.

2009: Marc Ravalomanana resigns as president of Madagascar, turning power over to the military which in turn cedes power to Andry Rajoelina — in spite of the fact that he is too young to legally hold the office of president.

2010: The Dresden Historians Commission publishes a report, after five years of research, on the 1945 Allied bombings of Dresden, Germany, during World War II; it concludes that about 25,000 people were killed — fewer than had been widely believed.

2013: A freed Palestinian prisoner is given a hero’s welcome in the Gaza Strip after ending his hunger strike in an Israeli jail and agreeing to a plea bargain that will confine him to the Hamas-run territory for the next 10 years.

2014: A US Navy SEAL team seizes the
Morning Glory, a tanker filled with Libyan oil illegally sold by a militia that controls Libya’s oil ports; three Libyans on-board are arrested, and the tanker heads back toward Libya.

2016: Archaeologists announce the discovery of a 2,500-year-old, iron age, warrior king burial ground with 75 graves, in Pocklington, Northern England.

2018: Africa’s only female head of State, Mauritian President Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, confirms she is resigning amid an expenses scandal.

2019: Facebook removes 1.5 million videos of the Christchurch mosque shootings in the first 24 hours after the attack.

2020: Chad begins repaying a US$100-million debt to Angola with cattle as more than 1,000 cows arrive in Luanda.

2022: Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari apologises for recent fuel shortages and power outages, including the failure of the national electricity grid and an increase in adulterated fuel.

2024: Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV documentary detailing the toxic nature of some Nickelodeon shows, especially under Dan Schneider during the 1990s and early 2000s, premieres.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Nat King Cole, American musician who first came to prominence as a jazz pianist but reached enormous popularity with warm, relaxed, somewhat breathy-voiced ballad singing (1919-1965); David Boxer, acclaimed Jamaican curator and art historian (1946-2017); Bobby Jones, American golfer and the first player to achieve a Grand Slam (1902-1971)

– AP/Jamaica Observer

The Mexican Government expropriates US$450,000,000 worth of properties for 17 American and British oil companies in Mexico, on this day in 1938.

On this day,1921, British activist Marie Stopes and her husband open the first birth control clinic in Holloway, England — Mothers’ Clinic for Constructive Birth Control. (AP)