TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2010: President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sign agreements for nuclear weapons cuts in order to shrink the arsenals of the Cold War’s superpowers to the lowest point since the arms race of the 1960s.

OTHER EVENTS

1938: Great Britain demands the Mexican Government return expropriated lands to British oil companies.

1958: United States President Dwight D Eisenhower proposes mutual inspection as a means of enforcing an atomic test ban.

1962: The Cuban Government announces that 1,179 prisoners seized in the 1961 invasion of Cuba have been convicted of treason and each sentenced to 30 years in prison; officials offer to free all the prisoners upon payment of a US$62,000,000 ransom.

1968: Major League Baseball decides to postpone opening day because of the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

1969: Haskell Karp, the first person to be kept alive with an artificial heart, dies in Houston after receiving a human heart transplant.

1973: Pablo Picasso, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, dies in France at age 91.

1974: Black American baseball player Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s record which had stood for 39 years since 1935.

1975: Frank Robinson debuts as the first African American baseball manager as the Cleveland Indians beat the New York Yankees 5-3.

1979: The final episode of
All in the Family airs on CBS; one of American TV’s most successful sitcoms, it was known for its frank and satirical treatment of such topics as race, gender, sex, and bigotry.

1990: Ryan White, who becomes a national symbol in the United States after he contracts AIDS from a blood transfusion given to treat his haemophilia, dies at age 18.

1991: Oakland A’s stadium becomes the first outdoor arena in the USA to ban smoking.

1992: The first black player to win a major men’s singles championship, the US Open, in 1968, with later victories in the Australian Open (1970) and Wimbledon (1975) and who remains the only black player to win the men’s singles title at those Grand Slam events, Arthur Ashe announces he has AIDS, contracted during a coronary bypass operation.

1998: Police and army troops take over Bolivia’s coca leaf and cocaine-producing region, sweeping aside roadblocks put up by protesters during a week of violence that leaves at least four dead.

1999: Yugoslavia says its 14-month war against ethnic Albanian separatists is over and urges refugees to return home; NATO, however, continues its air strikes against the country.

2003: Israeli helicopter gunships fire five missiles at a vehicle in Gaza City, killing local Hamas leader Said Aldin al-Arabid, the target, and five others; at least 47 Palestinian civilians are also wounded.

2005: Pope John Paul II is buried after what is by far the largest papal funeral ever held; in the previous week more than two million people had viewed the pope’s body as it lay in state.

2013: Margaret Thatcher, the United Kingdom’s and Europe’s first woman prime minister (1979-90), and the only British prime minister in the 20th century to win three consecutive terms, dies at age 87.

2015: President of the United States Barack Obama visits Jamaica for two days.

2019: Actress Allison Mack pleads guilty to sex-trafficking charges for her involvement in sex cult NXIVM.

2020: After five years a Saudi-backed coalition battling Houthi fighters in Yemen calls for a ceasefire in order to stop the spread of COVID-19.

2021: United States President Joe Biden says, “Gun violence in this country is an epidemic,” as he unveils a package of executive actions including restrictions on “ghost guns”.

2022: The US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bans Will Smith from attending the Oscars for 10 years after he slaps host Chris Rock on stage during the 2022 ceremony.

2024: A new Vatican document rejects the concept of changing a person’s biological sex, despite Pope Francis’s recent overtures to the transgender community.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Juan Ponce de León, Spanish explorer and conquistador who first arrived in the Caribbean with Columbus’s second voyage in 1493 (1460-1521); Kofi Annan, Ghanaian statesman and secretary general of the United Nations (1938-2018); Vivienne Westwood, British fashion designer who, with her partner Malcolm McLaren, extended the influence of the 1970s punk music movement into fashion (1941-2022)

– AP/ Jamaica Observer/OnThisDay.

com/ Britannica.com

Today in 1958 US President Dwight D Eisenhower (left) proposes mutual inspection as a means of enforcing an atomic test ban. Here he and Vice-President Richard Nixon share a light moment. Photo: AP

Jamaica’s then Prime Minister PJ Patterson (right) makes a presentation to UN Secretary General (1938-2018) Kofi Annan. The Ghanaian statesman was born on this day in 1938 and died in 2018. a