Today is the 118th day of 2025. There are 247 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1976: India’s Supreme Court upholds the right of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Government to imprison political opponents without a court hearing.

OTHER EVENTS

1817: The United States (US) and Britain sign the Rush-Bagot Treaty, which limits the number of naval vessels allowed in the Great Lakes.

1881: Gunfighter Billy the Kid escapes from prison in Mesilla, New Mexico, where he had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death; he is killed several months later by Sheriff Pat Garrett.

1918: Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the archduke’s wife, Sophie, dies in prison of tuberculosis.

1937: The first animated cartoon electric sign is displayed in New York City, USA.

1941: Colonel Lindbergh resigns his commission as a reserve officer in the US air corps, declaring that President Franklin D Roosevelt’s remarks questioning his loyalty left him “no honourable alternative”.

1945: Buchenwald concentration camp is described in an official report made by Allied military mission as an “extermination factory” in which thousands of civilian internees were deliberately starved or put to death by Nazi guards.

1951: Hungarian authorities release Robert A Vogeler, US businessman imprisoned on charges of espionage.

1952: The Allied occupation of Japan comes to an end after seven years of rapid social and economic change following the country’’s surrender in World War II.

1964: Vasily Vasilievich Tarasov, Izvestia correspondent in Ottawa, is expelled from Canada for espionage.

1965: President Johnson announces the landing of United States Marines in the Dominican Republic to protect and evacuate US citizens as fighting between various factions there intensify.

1967: At the height of the Vietnam War American boxer Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the U.S. Army, citing religious reasons; his subsequent conviction is eventually overturned by the US Supreme Court.

1969: French leader Charles de Gaulle, following his defeat in a referendum, resigns, retires permanently, and resumes writing his memoirs.

1974: A federal jury in New York acquits former Attorney General John Mitchell and former Commerce Secretary Maurice H Stans of charges in connection with a secret US$200,000 contribution to President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign from financier Robert Vesco.

1982: American professional boxer George Foreman, at 33, weds his fourth wife, Andrea Skeete; they divorce three years later in 1985.

1986: The Soviet TV news programme Vremya announces a nuclear accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station — two days after the event.

1990: Guns & Roses singer Axl Rose marries Erin Everly but the union is annulled the same year.

1996: Australian gunman Martin Bryant begins a killing spree that leaves 35 people dead and some 18 others wounded in the Port Arthur area of Tasmania, Australia; it is the country’s worst mass shooting and leads to stricter gun controls.

2000: The US Department of Justice and 17 states ask Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to break Microsoft Corporation into two competing companies

2001: A Russian rocket lifts off from Central Asia bearing the first space tourist, California businessman Dennis Tito, and two cosmonauts on a journey to the International Space Station.

2003: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan hold a summit meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, to create the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which is intended to help address terrorism and narcotics issues affecting all the states. 2003: Andre Agassi recaptures the world number one ranking to become the oldest top-ranked male in the history of the Association of Tennis Professionals rankings, at 33 years, 13 days.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Alfred Louis Valentine, Jamaican cricketer (1930-2004); Madge Sinclair, internationally acclaimed Jamaican actress (1938-1995); Penelope Cruz, Spanish actress (1974- ); Harry Shum Jr, Costa Rican actor (1982- ); Jenna Ushkowitz, South Korean actress (1986- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer