Today is the 244th day of 2025. There are 121 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1957: The worst railway disaster in Jamaica’s history occurs in Manchester approximately 11:30 pm when a train carrying some 1,600 passengers derails its tracks; close to 200 persons lose their lives in this the second-worst rail disaster in the world at the time.

OTHER EVENTS

1715: King Louis XIV of France dies after a reign of 72 years — the longest reign of any major European monarch.

1730: United States Founding Father Benjamin Franklin establishes a common-law marriage with Deborah Read.

1864: The Charlottetown Conference, the first of a series of meetings that ultimately leads to the formation of the Dominion of Canada, convenes at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

1878: The first female telephone operator, Emma Nutt, starts work for the Edwin Holmes Telephone Dispatch Company in Boston, USA.

1914: The last known passenger pigeon dies in the Cincinnati (Ohio) Zoo, USA.

1923: A great earthquake strikes the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area; the death toll from the shock is estimated at 142,800.

1928: Ahmed Bey Zogu is proclaimed king of Albania and will rule as Zog I for 11 years until 1939.

1930: The Young Plan, the second renegotiation of Germany’s World War I reparation payments, goes into effect.

1938: Foreign Jews who had entered Italy since 1919 are ordered to emigrate within six months; the next day the Italian Government continues its attack on Jews by barring non-Aryan teachers and students from all State and private schools.

1939: The lethal combination of German blitzkrieg tactics, French and British inactivity, and Soviet perfidy doom Poland to swift defeat after Adolf Hitler invades the country at the free city of Danzig, sparking World War II; Telegraph journalist Clare Hollingworth becomes the first to report the outbreak of the war, considered the “scoop of the century”.

1947: With a victory by Armed in the Washington Park Handicap, Calumet Farm becomes the first stable to surpass US$1 million in annual earnings; it thus leads all owners with total earnings of US$1,402,436.

1952: Life magazine publishes Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, his last major work of fiction and which is also released as a book; in 1953 it wins a Pulitzer Prize.

1958: British trawlers protected by naval frigates begin fishing within Iceland’s self-proclaimed 12-mile limit.

1960: The 86th US Congress adjourns sine die after failing to agree on a proposed Bill giving President Dwight D Eisenhower the right to refuse to purchase sugar from the Dominican Republic.

1962: The United Nations announces Earth’s population has hit three billion.

1967: Ilse Koch, Nazi war criminal (commonly known as The B–ch of Buchenwald) hangs herself in prison at age 60.

1972: American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer defeats Russian champion Boris Spassky 12.5-8.5 in Reykjavik, Iceland, in the most publicised world title match ever played; Fischer thus becomes the first American to win the title.

1974: A Dutch law against pirate radio goes into effect.

1975: All political parties are forbidden in Bangladesh.

1980: Due to poor health Canadian activist Terry Fox, who had part of his leg amputated because of cancer, is forced to end his Marathon of Hope, a run across Canada to raise money for cancer research; it is later discovered the cancer had spread to his lungs, and he dies in 1981.

1982: Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo closes all of the country’s private banks so they can be “incorporated directly into the service of the nation”.

1983: An unarmed South Korean commercial airliner flying off-course over sensitive Soviet military installations is shot down near Sakhalin Island by a Soviet fighter pilot; all 269 persons aboard the plane are killed.

1985: In a search led by American oceanographer Robert Ballard, the wreck of the Titanic is found on the ocean floor at a depth of about 13,000 feet (4,000 metres).

1986: Actress Whoopi Goldberg weds cinematographer David Claessen.

2000: Typhoon Maria sweeps through China’s Guangdong and Hunan provinces; the storm claims the lives of at least 47 persons and causes some US$175 million in damage.

2002: A fire starts in the Angeles National Forest in California, USA, and rapidly consumes 11,000 acres (4,450 hectares), forcing the immediate evacuation of at least 7,000 campers.

2004: Chechen rebels seize a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia; the siege, which ends two days later, results in the deaths of more than 330 people, the majority of them children.

2007: Tyson Gay helps the USA win the men’s 4 x 100m relay at the world track and field championships in Osaka, Japan, joining Carl Lewis and Maurice Greene as the only men to win three gold medals at one world meet.

2009: North Korea restores regular border crossings for South Korean companies operating in the joint industrial enterprise in Kaesong, North Korea.

2013: Gareth Bale transfers from Tottenham Hotspur FC to Real Madrid for an estimated world record fee of £85.3 million (€100 million).

2014: Anti-government protesters overrun and ransack the Islamabad headquarters of Pakistan’s State television broadcaster, forcing it off the air until the military evicts the insurgents.

2016: San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (National Football League) kneels in protest during the USA’s national anthem, before a preseason game against the Chargers at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium, objecting to racial injustice and police brutality in the America.

2018: Aretha Franklin’s funeral is held in Detroit and attended by Stevie Wonder, Ariana Grande, and Bill Clinton; it also features a procession of 140 pink Cadillacs.

2019: Tom Collins, Canadian ice skating promoter (Champions On Ice), dies from stroke complications at 88.

2020: BTS become the first all-Korean pop act to top the Billboard 100 singles chart with Dynamite.

2021: Cristiano Ronaldo breaks the world record for goals scored in men’s international football when he hits his 110th and 111th goals for Portugal in a 2-1, World Cup-qualifying win over the Republic of Ireland, in Faro.

2024: Ugandan Olympic marathon runner Rebecca Cheptegei is set on fire by her boyfriend in Endebess, Kenya, and later dies.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Rocky Marciano, American, world heavyweight boxing champion 1952-1956, when he retired from the ring (1923-1969); Seiji Ozawa, Japanese American conductor (1935-2024); Alton Ellis, Jamaican “Godfather of Rocksteady” (1938-2008); Barry Gibb, British musician, singer and songwriter (1946 – ); Phil McGraw, American psychologist, author, and television personality famous for numerous appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show and his own daytime talk show, Dr Phil (1950- )