Today is the 159th day of 2026. There are 206 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2010: United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says proposed new United Nations (UN) sanctions against Iran’s suspect nuclear programme will be the toughest ever adopted.

OTHER EVENTS

632: The prophet Muhammad dies in Medina; he leaves no arrangement for his succession, thereby creating a rift in Islam lasting to this day.

1783: The Laki volcano in southern Iceland begins an eight-month eruption, killing 10,000 and causing widespread famines throughout Asia and Europe.

1937: The American Medical Association (AMA) officially recognises birth control at the organisation’s annual assembly.

1949: British author George Orwell publishes his dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-four, a warning against totalitarianism and which introduces such concepts as Big Brother and the Thought Police.

1965: US troops in Vietnam are authorised to engage in offensive operations.

New Zealand’s Labour Government legislates against nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered vessels in their country on this day in 1987 — the only one to legislate against nuclear power.

1984: American comedy horror film Gremlins is released. Ghostbusters, an American supernatural comedy film, premieres.

1987:
New Zealand’s Labour Government legislates against nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered vessels in their country; this nation is the only one to legislate against nuclear power.

1988: Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze tells the UN that Moscow would observe a moratorium on nuclear testing if the United States also agrees.

1990: Vaclav Havel is elected president in Czechoslovakia’s first free elections in 44 years.

1992: Delegates at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, approve a new UN body to monitor compliance with environmental treaties.

1994: Two months after the start of the carnage in Rwanda, the UN Security Council approves the dispatch of 5,500 peacekeepers with a mandate to protect humanitarian aid but not to stop the slaughter.

2001: The Caribbean Search Centre, a joint security venture between the British and Jamaican governments and one of only two such facilities worldwide, opens at the Jamaica Police Academy training complex (now The National Police College of Jamaica) of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, at Twickenham Park, St Catherine.

2002: Serena Williams defeats her sister Venus Williams to win her first French Open tennis title.

In 1949 today British author George Orwell publishes Nineteen Eighty-four, warning against totalitarianism and introducing concepts like Big Brother and the Thought Police.

2005: Ethiopian police open fire on stone-throwing protesters in the centre of the capital, killing 22 people and wounding hundreds as unrest mounts over the ruling party’s claim of victory in recent elections.

2006: The US Food and Drug Administration approves Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus that causes cervical cancer.

2009: The UN hosts its first World Oceans Day, seeking to celebrate oceans and raise awareness of threats they and their marine ecosystems face.

2015: Siding with the White House in a foreign policy power struggle with Congress, the Supreme Court rules 6-3 that Americans born in the disputed city of Jerusalem cannot list Israel as their birthplace on passports.

2017: Ex-Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey testifies to a US Senate committee that US President Donald Trump told “lies, plain and simple”.

2018: WhatsApp rumours of child kidnappers in India prompt the beating of two men to death by a mob in Karbi Angong district, Assam.

The world’s most powerful supercomputer, Summit, which can process 200,000 trillion calculations per second, is launched at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, USA by IBM and Nvidia.

2019: Albanian President Ilir Meta cancels nationwide local elections amid a constitutional crisis, after the Opposition refuses to participate until Prime Minister Edi Rama resigns.

The National Police College of Jamaica. The Caribbean Search Centre, only one of two such facilities worldwide, opens at the Jamaica Police Academy (now The National Police College of Jamaica) training complex of the Jamaica Constabulary Force today in 2001.

2020: Former astronaut Kathy Sullivan is the first woman to reach the deepest point of the ocean when she travels aboard Challenger Deep
in the Mariana Trench.

2022: The Ms Marvel TV miniseries premieres on Disney+ with Disney’s first on-screen Muslim superhero story, starring Iman Vellani.

2023: British Prime Minister M Rishi Sunak meets US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington to, among other things, investigate the dangers of AI.

The US Supreme Court upholds the Voting Rights Act, ruling 5-4 that the Republican-drawn congressional districts in Alabama had weakened black voting by creating just one district where they are a majority.

2024: Israel rescues four Israeli hostages from the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza but kills 274 Palestinians and injures 698 in the process of the daylight operation.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Francis Crick, biophysicist best known for determination of the molecular structure of DNA (1916-2004); Tim Berners-Lee, British computer scientist generally credited as the World Wide Web’s
inventor (1955- )

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