Today is the 342nd day of 2025. There are 23 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1974: Greece votes decisively to become a republic and eliminate its monarchy that dates back to 1832.

OTHER EVENTS

1349: Some 500 Jews of Nuremberg are massacred during the Black Death riots.

1521: Christina of Saxony, queen of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, dies at 59.

1609: The second public library in Europe, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, opens its reading room.

1895: During the Battle at Amba Alagi, Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II drives Italian General Oreste Baratieri out.

1914: The British destroy the German naval squadron off the Falkland Islands.

1925: Adolf Hitler’s book
Mein Kampf is published.

1942: Albert Kahn, known for his designs of American automobile factories and considered the “father of modern factory design” in his time, dies.

1949: The United Nations (UN) General Assembly asks world powers to recognise the political independence of China as the Nationalist Government moves from the mainland to Formosa and the Communists continue to press their attacks.

1953: The United States proposes in the UN General Assembly to have international control of atomic energy.

1956: A call for a general strike in Hungary leads to martial law and mass arrests.

1978: Golda Meir, Israeli politician who helped found the State of Israel (1948), later serving as its fourth prime minister (1969–74), and the first and only woman thus far to hold this post, dies.

1980: Co-leader of revolutionary British rock group The Beatles, musician John Lennon is shot to death by a fan outside his New York City, USA, apartment building.

1982: Norman Mayer holds the Washington Monument hostage, demanding an end to nuclear weapons; he is killed by police after 10 hours but had no explosives.

1987: The first Palestinian “Intifada”, or uprising against the Israeli occupation, begins in the Israeli-occupied territories; two years later the Israeli army confines more than one million Arabs to their homes and deploys extra troops as Palestinians mark the second anniversary of an uprising in Israeli-occupied territories.

1995: The World Health Organization announces that a new case of the Ebola virus has been confirmed in the Ivory Coast; the same illnesss killed 250 people in Zaire earlier in the year.

2000: New York Mets pitcher Mike Hampton agrees to sign with the Colorado Rockies for US$123 million — the biggest financial agreement in the history of professional baseball.

2003: Terrorists including the mastermind, chief gunman, and 13 other members of European militant group The Revolutionary Organization 17 November, who once taunted Greek authorities, are convicted by a special tribunal for killings and attacks spanning a generation.

2004: Congress replaces a US intelligence network focused on the Cold War fight against communism with a new structure requiring military and civilian spy agencies to jontly combat the newest US enemy — networks of terrorists intent on waging a holy war against America.

2005: United Kingdom prosecutors drop all charges against three men who were accused of spying on behalf of the Irish Republican Army, a 2002 scandal that destroyed the central accomplishment of Northern Ireland’s peace accord — power-sharing.

2007: Gunmen kill three people in an attack on a party office of Pakistan’s Opposition Leader Benazir Bhutto.

2010: Rioting over the announced election results in Haiti brings the country to a virtual halt; four people are reportedly killed.

2011: The NBA and players’ union reach a financial agreement to end a 161-day lockout, shortening the season by 16 games.

2013: North Korea acknowledges the purge of leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful uncle on allegations of corruption, drug use, and a long list of other “anti-State” acts.

2016: John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit Earth, dies at age 95.

2019: Jarad Anthony Higgins, influential American rapper, singer, and songwriter from Chicago known professionally as Juice WRLD, dies from a drug overdose.

2021: Olaf Scholz is sworn in as the new chancellor of Germany, replacing Angela Merkel after 16 years.

2022: Iran announces the first known execution of a participant in anti-Government unrest, after convicting a man in a revolutionary court of “moharebeh” (enmity against God).

2023: Kawhi Leonard scores a season-high 41 points in a win over the Utah Jazz.

2024: President Volodymyr Zelensky says 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in the country’s war with Russia, with 370,000 injured.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Frederick Nathaniel “Toots” Hibbert, ska and reggae pioneer, band leader of Toots & the Maytals (1942-2020); Nicki Minaj, Trinidadian-born rapper, singer and songwriter (1982- ); Raheem Sterling, Jamaican-born English professional footballer (1994- )

– AP/Jamaica Observer