Today is the 254th day of 2025. There are 111 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2007: Bruce Golding becomes Jamaica’s eighth prime minister.

OTHER EVENTS

1783: American statesman and philosopher Benjamin Franklin negotiates a peace settlement between the United States, Great Britain and France, calling it the Treaty of Paris.

1857: The Mountain Meadows Massacre takes place in present-day southern Utah as a 120-member Arkansas immigrant party is slaughtered by Mormon militiamen, aided by Paiute Indians.

1936: The Boulder Dam (now Hoover Dam) begins operation as President Franklin D Roosevelt presses a key in Washington to signal the start up of the dam’s first hydroelectric generator.

1941: Ground-breaking takes place for the Pentagon.

1955: The Miss America pageant makes its network TV debut on ABC and Miss California, Lee Meriwether, is crowned the winner.

1967: The Carol Burnett Show premieres on CBS.

1970: American rock guitar legend Jimi Hendrix gives what becomes his final interview with NME’s Keith Allston, in England.

1973: Chile’s President Salvador Allende dies in a US-supported military coup, and military officials say he committed suicide rather than surrender.

1993: In front of human rights observers a prominent supporter of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is dragged from a mass and assassinated outside a church in Haiti.

1997: Scots vote to create their own Parliament after 290 years of union with England.

1998: Independent counsel Kenneth Starr tells the US Congress there are 11 grounds for impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

2001: Terrorists crash two hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City, bringing down the 110-storey Twin Towers and killing more than 2,700 people. Another hijacked jetliner slams into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, killing at least 189 people. A fourth hijacked plane crashes in rural southern Pennsylvania, killing 44 people aboard.

2003: Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh dies in a hospital after being stabbed repeatedly the previous day by an unidentified male attacker while shopping at a department store in Stockholm.

2004: Roger Federer of Switzerland defeats Lleyton Hewitt of Australia to win the men’s tournament and become the first man to win three Grand Slam titles in a single year since 1988.

2007: Osama bin Laden’s voice is heard on a new videotape commemorating one of the 9/11 suicide hijackers and calling on young Muslims to follow his example by martyring themselves in attacks. China signs an agreement to prohibit the use of lead paint on toys exported to the United States.

2011: A convoy carrying ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s son al-Saadi crosses into neighbouring Niger, one of the highest-profile former regime figures to flee.

2014: Key Arab allies promise to “do their share” to fight Islamic militants but NATO member Turkey refuses to join in.

2016: The US marks the 15th anniversary of 9/11 with the solemn roll-call of the dead at ground zero.

2017: A march with 1,000,000 participants on Spain’s national day takes place in Barcelona in support of independence for Catalonia.

2018: Russia launches its largest military exercise since 1981 involving 300,000 personnel, with Chinese troops participating. Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward is published by Simon and Schuster.

2019: Water is detected for the first time on a planet outside our solar system, on exoplanet K2-18b 110 which is light-years away; the findings are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

D H Lawrence, English author (1885-1930); Ferdinand Marcos, Philippine president (1917-1989); Bashar al-Assad, Syrian president (1965- ); Harry Connick Jr, singer (1967- ); Ludacris, rapper (1977- )

– AP/ Jamaica Observer