TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1966: Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I, believed to be the Second Coming of Christ by many Rastas, arrives in Jamaica for a visit—an event since celebrated annually in Rastafari as Grounation Day.

OTHER EVENTS

1649: The Maryland assembly passes the Maryland Toleration Act, which provides for freedom of worship for all Christians.

1942: Immediate seizure of all patents owned or controlled by enemies is orders by United States President Franklin D Roosevelt.

1952: Secretaries’ Day (now Administrative Professionals’ Day) is first celebrated.

1953: Riga radio announces that six ministers of Latvian nationality in the Government of the Latvian SSR had been dismissed and replaced by Russians.

1961: President John F Kennedy announces that the initial project of the Peace Corps would be in Tanganyika to help local technicians build roads.

1967: Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of the late Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, arrives in the United States from Switzerland, after defecting from the USSR.

1972: The Quebec National Assembly passes emergency legislation ordering an end to the strike begun April 11 by 200,000 government workers, teachers, and hospital personnel.

1975: Denouncing the United States as untrustworthy, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resigns after 10 years in office.

1984: After 37 weeks Michael Jackson’s album Thriller is knocked off as top album by movie soundtrack for Footloose.

1988: An explosion aboard the 18,000-ton tanker Athenian Venture off the coast of Newfoundland breaks the vessel apart and claims the lives of 24 Polish crewmen and five of their wives.

1991: An explosion in a coal mine in Shanxi (Shanai) province, China, occurs when concentrated levels of coal dust in the shaft ignite; all 147 miners in the pit are killed.

1995: Four Slovaks, three Hungarians, and two Ukrainians are arrested near Poprad, Slovakia, and charged with the illegal possession of radioactive material; evidence indicates that the 17 kg (37.4 lb) of uranium were being transported from Ukraine to a location somewhere in Hungary.

2000: Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf announces that, henceforth, honour killings of women who are felt to have shamed their families will be legally treated as murders.

2003: Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev collapses twice while giving a televised speech, though he returns each time and finishes the speech; he returns to work the following day.

2008: Maulana Sufi Muhammad, the leader of a group of radical Islamists that has fought the Government of Pakistan for two decades, is released from prison by the new provincial Government in Peshawar in return for a vow to abjure violence and work for peace.

2009: The International Monetary Fund releases a report on the global financial crisis in which it estimates the amount of losses faced by financial establishments throughout the world as US$4.05 trillion.

2014: Syria calls for a presidential election June 3 to give President Bashar Assad a veneer of electoral legitimacy in the midst of a civil war that has killed more than 150,000 people and driven a third of the population from their homes.

2016: American musician Prince — who created groundbreaking music that fused funk, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and pop and was one of the biggest stars of the 1980s and 90s — dies at age 57 from an accidental overdose of fentanyl, a powerful opioid.

2019: Ukrainian comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy wins the country’s presidential election in a landslide.

2020: At least 25,000 extra people across 11 countries are reported to have died during COVID-19 pandemic that were not previously counted, according to new mortality figures on this day.

2021: The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announces it will no longer prosecute prostitution and dismisses 914 open cases, part of a growing movement to change the approach to prostitution.

2023: The US Supreme Court rules abortion pill Mifepristone can remain widely available, blocking a ban by a Texas United States district judge.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Friedrich Froebel, German educational reformer and founder of the kindergarten (1782-1852); James Starley, inventor and father of bicycle industry (1830-1881); John Muir, American naturalist and writer largely responsible for the establishment of both Sequoia National Park and Yosemite National Park in California (1838-1914); Elizabeth II, queen of the United Kingdom (1926-2022)

— AP/Jamaica Observer