Today is the 152nd day of 2026. There are 213 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2021: United States President Joe Biden’s Administration suspends oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing Donald Trump’s decision.

OTHER EVENTS

1671: The Turks declare war on Poland, leading to the Polish surrender of Ukraine.

1859: The Philadelphia A’s organise to play “town ball” which becomes baseball 20 years later.

1869: A new Spanish Constitution is promulgated, continuing the monarchy but allowing universal male suffrage and freedom of religion.

1943: A civilian flight from Lisbon to London is shot down by the Germans during World War II, killing all aboard, including actor Leslie Howard.

1969: Tobacco advertising is banned on Canadian radio and television.

1972: Atlantic Records releases Amazing Grace, a live double album by American singer Aretha Franklin, recorded at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles; a critical and commercial success, it wins the 1973 Grammy Award for Best Soul Gospel Performance, selling over two million copies in the US and becoming the best-seller of Franklin’s career, as well as the highest-selling live gospel music album of all time.

1980: CNN, the Cable News Network, makes its debut in the United States.

1985: West Indian cricket batsman Sir Isaac Vivian “Viv” Alexander Richards scores 300 in a day on the way to 322 during a tour match against Warwickshire at Taunton; 42 fours and 8 sixes are hit off 258 balls.

1987: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rashid Karami is killed when a time bomb planted in an attache case explodes in his lap aboard a helicopter.

1994: South Africa rejoins the British Commonwealth, 33 years after leaving due to apartheid.

1997: Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, is fatally burned in a fire set off by her 12-year-old grandson in her Yonkers, New York, apartment.

2000: A United Nations tribunal for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide sentences a Belgian-born radio journalist to 12 years in prison for broadcasts that encouraged the slaughter.

2001: Nepal’s Crown Prince Dipendra shoots and kills his parents, King Birendra and Queen Aiswarya, and six other royal family members before shooting himself.

2002: The Czech Republic approves the world’s first national law aimed at limiting light pollution; the “dark-sky law” requires outdoor lighting to be more efficient, whereby fixtures should be shielded or directed downward to prevent light from travelling skyward, and fines can be issued to organisations and members of the public who disregarded the measures.

2005: Gunmen kill a French diplomat as he drives through Haiti’s capital, amid growing insecurity in the country.

2006: The US Army Corps of Engineers takes responsibility for the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, saying the levees failed because they were built in a disjointed fashion using outdated data.

2015: A cruise ship carrying 458 people capsizes on the Yangtze River; less than 50 survive.

2016: Switzerland’s Gotthard Base Tunnel is completed; it is the world’s longest at 57 kilometres and at a cost of €11 billion, the most expensive.

2017: US President Donald Trump announces the US is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement.

2018: Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is forced out of office by a no-confidence vote in Parliament, filed by socialist leader Pedro Sánchez.

2021: US President Joe Biden visits Tulsa, Oklahoma, markingthe 100-year anniversary of a racial massacre in the neighbourhood of Greenwood.

2022: US Coast Guard Admiral Linda Fagan assumes the post of commandant, becoming the first female commander of a US military branch.

2024: The world’s largest-ever election ends in India after six weeks, with 642 million people voting in the country’s general election, including a record 312 million women.

2025: The Ukrainian Security Service launches over 100 remotely piloted drones at military airfields across Russia in Operation Spider Web, targeting long-range bomber aircraft.

Paris Saint-Germain football club fans cause chaos across France following the club’s victory in the Champions League; two people die, 201 are injured, four stores are looted, hundreds are arrested in clashes with riot police, and one police officer is left in a coma.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Marilyn Monroe, American actress (1926-1962); Morgan Freeman, American actor (1937- ); Junior Alfred Williams, Jamaican former cricketer (1950- ); David Berkowitz, American serial killer (1953- ); Heidi Klum, German American model-businesswoman (1973- ); Alanis Morissette, Canadian musician (1974- )

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