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

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2003: Rwanda frees more than 22,000 detainees, most of whom were held in connection with the 1994 massacre of some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus by Hutu militias; approximately 80,000 genocide suspects remain in prison.

OTHER EVENTS

1816: The American Bible Society is organised in New York.

1842: A city-wide fire burns for over 100 hours in Hamburg, Germany.

1862: Mexico repels the French forces of Napoleon III at the Battle of Puebla, a victory that becomes a symbol of resistance to foreign domination and is now celebrated as a national holiday, Cinco de Mayo.

1870: The British and Foreign Society for Improving the Embossed Literature of the Blind adopts Braille as the best format for blind people.

1874: The Dutch Second Chamber passes a child labour law.

1881: Anti-Jewish rioting takes place in Kyiv, Ukraine.

1893: The Panic of 1893 causes a large crash on the New York Stock Exchange.

1916: US Marines invade the Dominican Republic; they remain there until 1924.

1917: Eugene Bullard gains his pilot’s licence from Aéro-Club de France and becomes the first African American military pilot; he flies with the French Air Service.

1920: Italian migrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are charged with murder of a paymaster at a US shoe factory in Massachusetts, USA; both are later executed.

1936: Italian forces occupy Addis Ababa, ending the Abyssinian (now Ethiopia) War; five years later Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie returns to Addis Ababa after the Italians are driven out with the help of Allied forces.

1945: While on a picnic on Gearhart Mountain, Oregon, USA, six people are killed after a Japanese balloon bomb explodes; they are the only deaths by enemy action to occur in the continental US during World War II.

1960: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev tells the Supreme Soviet of the USSR that a US spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers had been shot down on May 1 over the Soviet Union; Khrushchev refers to the flight as an “aggressive act” by the United States.

1962: A state of emergency is declared in three of Spain’s northern provinces because of widespread work stoppages.

1963: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein weds teacher Sajida Talfah.

1968: Bell Telephone Company, Western Electric Company, and the Communications Workers of America union ratify a new contract, ending a nationwide telephone strike that had begun April 18.

1976: A train collision at Schiedam, Netherlands, kills 24.

1989: Estonia’s Communist Party removes 22 party leaders in a sweep that gives greater strength to reformers.

1998: Renowned Jamaican saxophonist and founding member of The Skatalites, Tommy McCook dies of pneumonia and heart failure at 71 years old in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

2001: American publisher Clifton Keith Hillegass, creator of the popular series of literary study guides known as CliffsNotes, dies in Nebraska.

2004: Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe, from his short-lived Rose Period, sells to an anonymous bidder at a Sotheby’s auction for more than US$104 million, eclipsing by more than US$20 million the 1990 record price for a painting sold at auction.

2012: Japan shuts down its nuclear reactors, leaving the country without nuclear power for the first time since 1970.

2013: In a church attack in Njilan, Nigeria, 10 people are killed.

2014: China announces it will upgrade Ethiopia’s infrastructure in an effort to improve a China-Africa strategic partnership.

2018: Former Manchester United Manager Sir Alex Ferguson suffers a brain haemorrhage and is hospitalised.

2019: King Vajiralongkorn is crowned King of Thailand — the first monarch to be crowned in nearly seven decades — during a three-day celebration in Bangkok.

2020: Global confirmed cases of COVID-19 reach 3.65 million; US cases pass 70,000; the United Kingdom becomes the most affected country in Europe with 29,427 known deaths.

2021: George Jung, the American drug trafficker whose story is portrayed in the biopic Blow, dies of liver and kidney failure at 78.

2023: Terry Lewis, the disgraced Australian police officer who served as commissioner of the Queensland Police Service from 1976-87 and who was convicted of corruption and forgery, dies at 95.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

John Archer, American Congressman who received, in 1768, the first medical diploma issued on the US continent (1741-1810); Soeren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher-theologian (1813-1855); Neville Willoughby, Jamaican legendary radio broadcaster (1937-2006) ; Chris Brown, American singer (1988- ); Adele, English pop singer and songwriter (1988- )

Jamaican legendary radio broadcaster Neville Willoughby was born on this day in 1937. Willoughby passed away in 2006.