Today is the 323rd day of 2025. There are 42 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1862: Castleton Botanical Gardens in St Mary, Jamaica, is established.

OTHER EVENTS

1915: Labour organiser and songwriter Joe Hill is executed by Utah state officials and becomes a folk hero in the American labour movement.

1946: Radio broadcasting by foreign correspondents is formally abolished by the Soviet Government.

1965: The ecumenical council adopts, by a vote of 1,954 to 249, a declaration affirming freedom of conscience as Church doctrine.

1996: The 12.9-kilometre Confederation Bridge, joining Borden-Carleton, Prince Edward Island, and Cape Jourimain, New Brunswick, is completed and becomes the longest bridge over ice-covered waters in the world.

1998: For the first time since the country was divided in two, a group of tourists from South Korea enters North Korea.

2006: Innovative video game console the Nintendo Wii is released in North America by Nintendo President Satoru Iwata.

2007: Amazon.com begins selling the Kindle, a wireless electronic reading device that plays a key role in popularising e-books.

2009: A report is published in the journal Nature regarding a study showing the proportion of atmospheric carbon dioxide absorbed by the world’s oceans has slowed since the 1980s and more dramatically since 2000.

2010: The US’s Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) exempts uniformed airline pilots from new airline passenger screening procedures, including full-body scans and more intrusive pat-downs, which have raised objections from pilots and flight attendants, in addition to passengers.

2015: Jonah Lomu, New Zealand rugby union winger (youngest-ever All Black, 63 internationals), dies of a heart attack linked to kidney disease at age 40.

2017: Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe refuses to resign in a TV speech after being ousted as leader of ruling ZANU-PF party.

2019: The Weeknd releases his single Blinding Lights, which goes on to become the longest-charting song on Billboard’s Top 100 at 90 weeks. As many as 106 have died over five days in protests across 21 Iranian cities according to Amnesty International, but just 12 deaths reported by the Government.

2020: An inquiry finds “credible evidence” that elite Australian troops unlawfully killed 39 Afghan civilians.

2021: Austria becomes the first country to make the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory (from February 1) as it announces its fourth lockdown.

2022: General elections in Malaysia produce the country’s first-ever hung Parliament, with Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim securing the most seats.

2023: Brazil records its highest-ever temperature, 112.6°F, in Araçuaí, Minas Gerais state.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Ferdinand de Lesseps, French builder of Suez Canal (1805-1894); Calvin Klein, US clothing designer (1942- ); Savion Glover, US dancer-choreographer (1973- ); Winston “Merritone” Blake, Jamaican sound system operator, record producer, nightclub owner, promoter, occasional recording artiste, and who worked under pseudonyms Blake Boy and Judge Winchester (1940-2016)

– AP/Jamaica Observer