Today is the 167th day of 2025. There are 198 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2023: The Recording Academy announces new rules for the Grammy Awards aimed at AI use, stating “only human creators” can win but a work containing AI is eligible as long as human input is meaningful.

OTHER EVENTS

1903: The Ford Motor Company is founded by Henry Ford and 11 associate investors.

1909: Jim Thorpe makes his professional baseball pitching debut for Rocky Mount (ECL) with a 4-2 win; the debut eventually causes him to forfeit his Olympic gold medals.

1932: The Lausanne Conference, held to liquidate Germany’s payment of reparations to the former Allied and Associated powers of World War I, opens.

1944: George Stinney, a 14-year-old black youth, becomes the youngest person to die in the electric chair as the state of South Carolina, United States, executes him for the murders of two white girls, Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 7.

1950: The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrests David Greenglass on charges of passing secret atomic data to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) while stationed at the Los Alamos, New Mexico, atomic research centre.

1976: South African police fire on a group of Soweto students marching in protest against State plans to impose the Dutch-based Afrikaans — language of the white rulers who designed the system of racial oppression known as apartheid — as a medium of instruction in black schools, igniting a massive popular uprising during which hundreds are estimated to have died in the government crackdown that followed; the events are captured in 1992 film Sarafina.

1978: The film Grease opens and stars John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.

1987: A jury in New York acquits Bernhard Goetz of attempted murder in the subway shooting of four youth he said were going to rob him but he is convicted of illegal weapons possession; in 1996 a civil jury orders Goetz to pay US$43 million to one of the individuals he had shot.

1990: U Can’t Touch This by MC Hammer peaks at number eight.

1992: Controversial book on the Princess of Wales, Diana: Her True Story
(later changed to Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words) is published.

1995: Batman Forever opens with a record US$528-million weekend.

1996: Russian voters go to the polls in their first independent presidential election; the result is a run-off between President Boris Yeltsin (the eventual winner) and Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov.

1998: Afghanistan’s Taliban religious army orders the closing of more than 100 private schools that had been educating girls.

1999: Amnesty International singles out the United States for human rights abuses, citing use of the death penalty — particularly against people who committed crimes before they were 18.

2003: An ongoing drought from 2001 is putting some 12.6 million Ethiopians at risk of starving to death, United Nations food agencies say, adding that this could lead to the worst famine since a 1984-85 crisis in which a million people died of starvation.

2005: The first case of avian flu in a person in Indonesia is confirmed by health officials.

2007: A North Carolina State Bar disciplinary committee says disgraced prosecutor Mike Nifong will be disbarred for his disastrous prosecution of three Duke University lacrosse players falsely accused of rape.

2014: US Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx announces carmaker General Motors must pay a US$35-million fine and operate under federal supervision for a year as a result of its failure to report an ignition defect in many of its models; 13 deaths have been linked to that defect.

2016: President Barack Obama cheers on the push for new gun control measures after a deadly nightclub shooting that claimed 49 victims in Florida, USA.

2018: Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology is used for the first time in the World Cup, awarding France a penalty in their 2-1 win over Australia in Kazan.

2020: Support from Manchester United player Marcus Rashford and others forces the UK Government to make a U-turn on summer school meal vouchers.

2023: US truck driver Robert Bowers is found guilty of the deadliest attack on Jews in the US — the shooting of 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue, Pittsburgh, in 2018.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Adam Smith, Scottish economist, philosopher and author of (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of) The Wealth of Nations, a foundational text credited with establishing the first modern theories in economics (1723-1790); Geronimo, Apache military and religious leader (1829-1909); Katharine Graham, American owner and publisher of The Washington Post
and
Newsweek magazine (1917 – 2001)

— AP