Today is the 180th day of 2026. There are 185 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2013: President Barack Obama meets privately in Johannesburg, South Africa, with Nelson Mandela’s family as the world anxiously awaits news on the condition of the hospitalised, 94-year-old, anti-apartheid leader — Obama’s personal hero.

OTHER EVENTS

1520: Montezuma II, ninth and last emperor of the Aztecs, dies in Tenochtitlan of wounds he reportedly received from his alienated subjects when he tried to speak to them three days earlier, according to Spanish accounts.

1529: A religious civil war in Switzerland ends with the Peace of Kappel in which the Catholic cantons give freedom of religion to the Protestants.

1888: Professor Frederick Treves performs the first appendectomy in England.

1900: The Imperial Chinese Court issues what is essentially a declaration of war against foreigners in China, blaming them for hostilities and giving licence to the Boxers for even greater ferocity.

1946: The British arrest more than 2,700 Jews in Palestine in an attempt to stamp out terrorism.

1949: South Africa begins implementing apartheid, its racial segregation rules.

1963: A dispute between the Soviet Union and China worsens as the Soviets demand a recall of three officials at the Chinese embassy in Moscow.

1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 passes after an 83-day filibuster in the US Senate

1967: Israel defies international protests and unites the divided city of Jerusalem for the first time in two decades, following victory in the Six-Day War.

1990: The Lithuanian Parliament agrees to a 100-day moratorium on the declaration of independence, in exchange for an end to the economic blockade ordered by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

1991: The Yugoslav federal army threatens to take “decisive military action” against Slovenia unless the republic stops fighting government troops.

1992: Mohammed Boudfiaf, head of the Algerian ruling council, is assassinated.

1993: Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif imposes emergency rule in the Punjab province, where more than half of the country’s 120 million people live.

1999: A pre-dawn fire sweeps through a three-storey summer camp in Hwasung, South Korea, killing 23 kindergarten and grade-school children.

2001: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is unanimously re-elected to a second term by a 189-member General Assembly.

2004: The US military announces the formation of a five-member military tribunal to preside over the first trials of terror suspects held at its naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

2005: Hundreds of UN peacekeepers raid a Haiti slum filled with gangs loyal to ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, killing six gunmen and wounding five others.

2006: Female voters in Kuwait cast ballots in parliamentary elections for the first time.

2007: British police defuse a lethal explosive mix of gasoline, propane and nails discovered in an abandoned Mercedes; a second explosives-rigged car is also found nearby.

2009: Iraqi forces assume formal control of Baghdad and other cities after American troops hand over security in urban areas, in a defining step toward ending the US combat role in the country.

2010: Drug cartels, which fund a tenth of Mexico’s economy, insert themselves into politics, killing the leading candidate for governor of a northern state only days before elections in 12 states.

2011: Greece fends off bankruptcy that threatens to roil global financial markets, approving severe spending cuts and tax increases in the face of violent protests by Greeks who say they have suffered enough.

2014: The al-Qaeda breakaway group that seized much of north-eastern Syria and huge tracts of neighbouring Iraq formally declares the establishment of a new Islamic state.

2015: The Beijing Times reports that 30 per cent of the Great Wall of China has disappeared due to natural forces and the stealing of bricks.

2016: US Defense Secretary Ashton B Carter lifts the Pentagon’s ban on transgender people serving in the US armed forces.

2017: Kylie Jenner and Kendall Jenner apologise and remove T-shirts from sale featuring Tupac Shakur and others, after being accused of exploiting their legacies.

2020: Creator of landmark TV series The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–66), American director Carl Reiner dies at age 98.

2021: Former South African President Jacob Zuma is sentenced to 15 months in prison on contempt of court charges.

2022: The latest US murder clearance rates show that half of all murders are left unsolved, and are less likely to be solved if the victim is black or Hispanic.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Giacomo Leopardi, Italian author-philosopher (1798-1837); George Washington Goethals, US builder of the Panama Canal (1858-1928); Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, Indian scientist and statistician (1893-1972); Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French aviator-writer (1900-1944); Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (1911-2004); Little Eva, American pop singer of Locomotion (1943-2003); Don Carlos, original member of reggae group Black Uhuru (1952- )

— AFP/Jamaica Observer