Today is the second day of 2026. There are 363 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2001: Ships from outlying Taiwanese islands dock in ports in mainland China, making the first legal and direct crossing between the mainland and Taiwanese territory in more than 50 years.

OTHER EVENTS

366: The Alamanni cross the frozen Rhine River in large numbers and invade the Roman Empire.

1492: Muhammad XII, the last emir of Granada, surrenders the city to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, ending the Reconquista; the surrender also ends a centuries-long series of military campaigns waged by Christian states against Muslim rulers on the Iberian Peninsula (primarily comprising Spain and Portugal).

1557: Pontormo, Italian painter of the Sepulture of Christ, dies at 62.

1585: Habsburg Spain and Catholic France sign the secret Treaty of Joinville to end Protestantism in Europe.

1776: Austria ends the use of interrogation by torture.

1800: The free African American community of Philadelphia petitions the United States (US) Congress to abolish the slave trade.

1839: Louis Daguerre, one of photography’s earliest pioneers, is thought to have taken the first photograph of the Moon today; it is destroyed when his studio burns down soon afterward.

1893: The US Postal Service issues its first-ever set of commemorative stamps; they honour the upcoming World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

1905: Japanese General Nogi receives a letter of surrender from Russian General Stoessel, thereby formally ending the Russo-Japanese War.

1906: Willis Carrier receives a US patent for the world’s first air conditioner.

1920: The most spectacular of the Palmer Raids takes place when thousands of people are arrested in more than 30 US cities, accused of being foreign anarchists, communists, or radical leftists; the raids, led by US Attorney General A Mitchell Palmer with a primary goal of deporting those arrested, are the culmination of the era’s Red Scare.

1921: Religious services are broadcast on radio for the first time as KDKA in Pittsburgh airs the regular Sunday service of the city’s Calvary Episcopal Church.

1933: William “Kid” Gleason, American baseball utility (St Louis Browns, NY Giants, Philadelphia Phillies) and manager (Chicago White Sox, during “Black Sox” scandal), dies from a heart condition at 66.

1950: Emil Jannings — who won the first Academy Award for best actor for his roles in The Way of All Flesh (1927) and The Last Command (1928) — dies in Austria.

1955: President Jose Antonio Remon Cantera of Panama is assassinated at a racetrack.

1957: In the first of four meetings between the fighters, Gene Fullmer wins the world middleweight boxing title with a 15-round unanimous decision over Sugar Ray Robinson, at New York’s Madison Square Garden in the USA.

1959: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) launches Luna 1 spacecraft Mechta, the first to leave Earth’s gravity, reach the vicinity of the Moon, and be placed in heliocentric orbit.

1960: John Reynolds sets the age of the solar system at 4,950,000,000 years.

1964: An assassination attempt on President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana takes place fails.

1967: After defeating the incumbent Democrat by nearly one million votes, Ronald Reagan — a one-time actor who had become a major figure in conservative Republican politics — is sworn in as governor of California.

1974: President Richard Nixon signs legislation requiring states to limit highway speeds to 55 miles so as to conserve gasoline in the face of an Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries oil embargo; the 55 miles per hour limit is phased out in 1987 and federal speed limits abolished in 1995.

1976: The Soviet Union hardens its stance on emigration despite the 1975 Helsinki Agreement to permit freer movement of people and ideas in Europe.

1977: MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspends Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner for one year due to tampering charges in the Gary Matthews free agency signing.

1984: Wilson Goode is sworn in as Philadelphia’s first black mayor.

1991: Sharon Pratt becomes the first black woman to head a city of Washington’s size and prominence when she is sworn in as mayor of Washington, DC.

1992: Military commanders in Croatia agree to stop fighting within 24 hours to allow the dispatch of up to 10,000 United Nations (UN) peacekeepers.

1996: US Government dietary guidelines acknowledge for the first time that consuming some alcohol can be healthy.

1997: Kofi Annan arrives at UN headquarters for the first time as secretary general.

1999: Rebel forces shoot down a UN cargo plane with eight people aboard, in Angola’s highland war zone.

2004: The summit of the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation agrees on a framework for a free trade zone, which will start tearing down tariffs by January 1, 2006.

2005: After the devastation wreaked by the seas, a deluge from the skies deepens the misery for tsunami-stricken areas, triggering flash floods in Sri Lanka that send evacuees fleeing and increasing the threat of deadly disease.

2008: A mob torches a church where hundreds seek refuge in Kenya’s Rift Valley city of Eldoret; witnesses say dozens of people — including children — are burned alive or hacked to death with machetes in ethnic violence that follows Kenya’s disputed election.

2009: Maria de Jesus, believed to be the oldest living person in the world, dies at the age of 115 in Portugal.

2010: A chastened President Hamid Karzai must submit new Cabinet picks after defiant Afghan lawmakers reject 17 of his 24 nominees, including a powerful warlord and the country’s only woman minister.

2013: The United Nations gives a grim new count of the human cost of Syria’s civil war, saying the death toll has exceeded 60,000 in 21 months — far higher than recent estimates by anti-regime activists.

2017: The US House Republicans vote to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, but public uproar forces them to back down the next day.

2018: The World Health Organization reveals it will classify gaming addiction as a mental health condition in its next International Classification of Diseases.

2019: Two women become the first to ever enter India’s Sabarimala shrine in Kerala State, after a change in law, prompting protests.

2021: US President Donald Trump says to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” in a recording released by the Washington Post.

2023: Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin collapses from cardiac arrest but is revived by cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the field during a televised National Football League game in Cincinnati.

2024: Lee Jae-Myung, leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, survives an assassination attempt in Busan; he goes on to become president of South Korea in 2025.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Nouri Said, Iraqi prime minister (1888-1958); Isaac Asimov, Russian-born writer (1920-1992); Melville “Mel” Spence, Jamaican former Olympian in the 1956 and 1964 Summer Games (1936-2012); Taye Diggs, US actor (1971- ); Ben Hardy, English actor (
X-Men: Apocalypse) (1991- )

– AP/ Britannica/OnThisDay.com/Jamaica Observer

US President Richard Nixon signs legislation on this day, 1974, requiring states to limit highway speeds to 55 miles so as to conserve gasoline, in light of an an Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries oil embargo..

Free African American community Philadelphia petitions the United States Congress to abolish the slave trade, today in 1800.online