Today is the 124th day of 2026. There are 241 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1927: After 2 1/2 years, the Hermitage Dam on Wag Water River in eastern Jamaica is opened; it is 142 feet high, 465 feet wide, has a capacity of 430 million gallons, and is to serve the Kingston and St Andrew areas.

OTHER EVENTS

1634: Johan van Walbeeck’s fleet departs to the West Indies.

1776: Rhode Island, United States, declares its freedom from England, two months before the Declaration of Independence is adopted.

1814: King Ferdinand VII of Spain signs the Decree of the 4th of May, returning Spain to absolutism.

1818: Netherlands and Britain sign a treaty against illegal slave handling.

1886: A peaceful demonstration by labour protesters in Chicago against police brutality turns deadly when an unidentified individual throws a bomb into the crowd and police respond with random gunfire; 15 people are killed, including seven police officers, and dozens are injured; the Haymarket Affair, as it becomes known, results in widespread anger directed against immigrants and labour leaders.

1904: The US takes over construction of the Panama Canal from the French.

1916: Germany, responding to an ultimatum from US President Woodrow Wilson, agrees to limit its submarine warfare; it resumes unrestricted submarine warfare the following year, however.

1927: The US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded.

1959: The first Grammy Awards ceremony is held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel; the winners included Ella Fitzgerald as well as Frank Sinatra and the Kingston Trio.

1961: The first group of “freedom riders” leaves Washington, DC, USA, to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals.

1982: The British destroyer Sheffield is sunk by an Argentine plane off the Falklands.

1990: Latvia’s Parliament declares independence from the Soviet Union.

1991: In keeping with the constitution passed by the newly elected Parliament, Albanian President Ramiz Alia gives up all his Communist Party posts.

1992: Kuwaiti oil production returns to levels before the 1990 Iraqi invasion.

1994: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat sign an accord on Palestinian autonomy that grants self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

1995: Turkey announces it has pulled out the last of its troops from northern Iraq, six weeks after 35,000 soldiers cross the border to wipe out Kurdish rebel bases.

1998: Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski is given four life sentences plus 30 years by a federal judge in Sacramento, California, under a plea agreement sparing him the death penalty.

1999: The leader of Northern Ireland’s major Protestant party meets Catholic protesters for the first time, hoping to prevent the violence that has accompanied a disputed parade in the predominantly Protestant town of Portadown.

2001: The US is voted off the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Commission for the first time in the world body’s history.

2002: A passenger plane belonging to Nigeria’s private EAS Airlines crashes in a densely populated suburb of the northern city of Kano, killing 148 people.

2003: A series of tornado-laden storms kill 48 people across the Midwestern and southern United States while injuring hundreds of others.

2004: Jamaican legendary music pioneer and founder of Studio One, Clement Seymour “Sir Coxsone” Dodd dies.

2005: Israel freezes the handover of West Bank towns, citing Palestinian security forces’ failure to disarm militants in areas under their control.

2006: Ehud Olmert is formally sworn in as Israel’s prime minister with his new coalition Government, winning parliamentary approval to pursue his goal of drawing Israel’s final borders by 2010.

2008: Seth MacFarlane reaches an agreement worth US$100 million with Fox to keep Family Guy
and
American Dad on television until 2012, making him the world’s highest-paid television writer.

2009: Iraq’s Government rules out allowing US combat troops to remain in Iraqi cities despite concern that the Iraqi forces cannot cope with the security challenge following a resurgence of bombings in recent weeks.

2011: President Barack Obama says he has decided not to release death photos of terrorist Osama bin Laden because their graphic nature could incite violence and create national security risks for the United States.

2012: Some 14 decapitated bodies and nine hung from a bridge are found in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

2013: Harper Lee files a lawsuit against a literary agent over the copyright of To Kill a Mockingbird
.

2015: Golden State Warrior Stephen Curry is named Most Valuable Player for the 2014-15 National Basketball Association (NBA) season.

2018: California overtakes Great Britain to become the worlds fifth-largest economy.

2020: World leaders pledge US$8 billion to research treatments and a vaccine for COVID-19; the US and Russia do not take part.

2021: Malian woman Halima Cisse gives birth to nonuplets (nine babies) in Morocco, in only the third known case worldwide.

2022: The “world’s most dangerous trafficker”, Colombian drug kingpin Dairo Antonio Úsuga (known as Otoniel) is extradited to the US for drug charges.

A first of its kind study of transgender children transitioning during ages 3-12, by Princeton University, finds the vast majority continue to identify with their new gender five years later.

2023: Ed Sheeran is found not guilty by a Manhattan federal jury of copying Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On for his 2014 single Thinking Out Loud; the copyright infringement suit is filed by the heirs of Gaye’s co-writer Ed Townsend.

2024: The largest concert of Madonna’s career is held as she ends her Celebration world tour with a free concert in front of 1.6 million at Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

2025: US President Donald Trump announces 100 per cent tariffs on foreign films brought into the United States.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Sir Thomas Lawrence, English artist (1769-1830); Hosni Mubarak, former Egyptian president (1928-2020); Audrey Hepburn, Belgian-born actress (1929-1993); Katherine Jackson, matriarch of the Jackson musical family (1930- ); Jacob Miller, songwriter and first lead vocalist for reggae group Inner Circle (1952-1980)

— AP / Jamaica Observer / OnThisDay.com/Britannica.com

Jacob Miller, the first lead vocalist for reggae group Inner Circle, was born today in 1952. Miller died in 1980 at age 27.