Today is the 125th day of 2025. There are 240 days left in the year.

TODAY“S HIGHLIGHT

2003: Rwanda frees more than 22,000 detainees, most of whom were held in connection with the 1994 massacre of some 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu by Hutu militias; approximately 80,000 genocide suspects remain in prison.

Other Events

1640: King Charles I of England dissolves the Short Parliament, the first Parliament to be summoned in 11 years.

1809: For her technique of weaving straw with silk, Mary Kries becomes the first woman to receive a United States (US) patent; the process is largely used in the creation of hats and other headware.

1865: The first US train robbery occurs near North Bend, Ohio.

1891: New York’s Carnegie Hall (then named Music Hall) has its official opening night, featuring Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky as a guest conductor.

1892: The US Congress passes the Geary Chinese Exclusion Act, which requires Chinese in the United States to be registered or face deportation.

1905: The Chicago Defender, the most influential African American newspaper during the early and mid-20th century, is founded.

1936: Italian forces occupy Addis Ababa, ending the Abyssinian (now Ethiopia) War; five years later Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie returns to Addis Ababa after the Italians are driven out with the help of Allied forces.

1961: Alan Shepard Jr makes a 15-minute suborbital flight in the Freedom 7
spacecraft, becoming the first US astronaut to travel in space.

1962: A state of emergency is declared in three of Spain’s northern provinces because of widespread work stoppages.

1968: Bell Telephone Company, Western Electric Company, and the Communications Workers of America union ratify a new contract, ending a nationwide telephone strike that had begun April 18.

1973: American racehorse Secretariat wins the Kentucky Derby en route to capturing the US Triple Crown, which also includes the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes.

1989: Estonia’s Communist Party removes 22 party leaders in a sweep that gives greater strength to reformers.

1990: Crocodile Dundee actors Paul Hogan weds Linda Kozlowski at their newly built US$3-million mansion at Faraway Possum Creek in New South Wales, Australia.

1998: Renowned Jamaican saxophonist and founding member of The Skatalites, Tommy McCook dies at 71 years old of pneumonia and heart failure.

2001: American publisher Clifton Keith Hillegass, creator of the popular series of literary study guides known as CliffsNotes, dies in Nebraska.

2004: Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe, from his short-lived Rose Period, sells to an anonymous bidder at a Sotheby’s auction for more than US$104 million, eclipsing by more than US$20 million the 1990 record price for a painting sold at auction.

2007: At the 133rd Kentucky Derby, Calvin Borel aboard 9-2 favourite
Street Sense wins on his home track in front of special guest, Queen Elizabeth II.

2008: American/Columbia Records releases Home Before Dark, the 27th studio album by Neil Diamond; it tops the charts in the US, United Kingdom and New Zealand.

2009: Officials in Afghanistan say the US military air strikes the previous day, following heavy fighting against Taliban militants in the Bala Baluk district, killed at least 30 civilians.

2013: In a church attack in Njilan, Nigeria, 10 people are killed.

2015: The Traveller debut album by Chris Stapleton is released; in 2016 it wins the Grammy Award for Best Country Album and Billboard Album of the Year.

2018: Former Manchester United Manager Sir Alex Ferguson suffers a brain haemorrhage and is hospitalised.

2021: George Jung, the American drug trafficker whose story is portrayed in the biopic Blow, dies of liver and kidney failure at 78.

2023: Terry Lewis, the disgraced Australian police officer who served as commissioner of the Queensland Police Service from 1976-87 and who was convicted of corruption and forgery, dies at 95.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Soeren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher-theologian (1813-1855);
Neville Willoughby, Jamaican legendary radio broadcaster (1937-2006) ; Chris Brown American singer (1988- )

– AP/Jamaica Observer

Jamaican legendary radio broadcaster Neville Willoughby was born on this day in 1937.