Today is the 201st day of 2026. There are 164 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2005: Hurricane Emily slams into north-eastern Mexico, knocking out power, forcing thousands to flee small fishing villages, leaving hundreds homeless, and destroying luxury hotels in the Yucatan Peninsula.

OTHER EVENTS

1712: The Riot Act takes effect in Great Britain.

1808: Napoleon decrees that all French Jews adopt family names.

1810: Bogota rises against Spanish rule; the day is now recognised as Independence Day in Colombia.

1811: The Reverend Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a hero of independence, is executed by firing squad in Chihuahua, Mexico.

1868: Tax stamps are first used on cigarettes.

1881: Sioux leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, surrenders to United States troops.

1894: The Pullman Strike, a widespread railroad strike in the United States, ends shortly after President Grover Cleveland orders federal troops to Chicago.

1921: Congresswoman Alice Mary Robertson becomes the first woman to preside over the floor of the US House of Representatives.

1922: The League of Nations Council approves mandates for Cameroon, Togoland (now divided between Togo and Ghana) and Tanganyika (which later merges with Zanzibar to form Tanzania).

1924: Tehran in Persia comes under martial law after American Vice-Consul Robert Imbrie is killed by a religious mob enraged by rumours he had poisoned a fountain and killed several people.

1926: A convention of the Methodist Church votes to allow women to become priests.

1928: The Government of Hungary issues a decree ordering Gypsies to end their nomadic ways, settle permanently in one place, and subject themselves to the same laws and taxes as other Hungarians.

1933: Vatican State Secretary Pacelli (Pius XII) signs an accord with Adolf Hitler.

Jamaican Olympian and IAAF World Championships 4x100m gold medallist Dahlia Duhaney is celebrating a birthday today. 

1940: Billboard publishes its first singles record chart; the number one spot is held by I’ll Never Smile Again by Tommy Dorsey.

1944: The death March of 1,200 Jews from Lipcani, Moldavia, begins.

1945: The US flag is raised over Berlin as American troops prepare to occupy Germany after World War II.

1948: Syngman Rhee is elected as the first president of South Korea.

1951: Jordan’s King Abdullah is assassinated in Jerusalem by a Palestinian nationalist after Jordan annexes the West Bank territory.

1968: At Chicago’s Soldier Field the first International Special Olympics Summer Games, organised by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, begins and some 1,000 athletes — all of whom have intellectual disabilities — participate.

1969: US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin become the first men to walk on the moon after reaching the surface in their Apollo 11
lunar module.

1984: Vanessa Williams is asked to resign as Miss America due to publication of nude photos of her.

1985: Treasure hunters begin hauling off US$400 million in coins and silver ingots from the wreck of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which sank off the coast of Key West, Florida, 363 years before (1622).

1989: Burmese Opposition Leader Aung San Suu Kyi is placed under house arrest by the military Government of Myanmar.

1991: Russian Federation President Boris N Yeltsin bans political activity in Russian government offices and republic-run businesses.

1996: Hutu rebels attack Tutsi refugees at a camp in Burundi, killing some 320 people, mostly women and children.

1999: After 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic, astronaut Gus Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7 Mercury
capsule is lifted to the surface.

2003: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas meet in Jerusalem to discuss Palestinian demands for the release of prisoners held by Israel and for Israeli troop withdrawals from the West Bank; one year later to the day the United nations (UN) General Assembly demands Israel tear down the barrier it is building to seal off the West Bank but Israel vows to continue construction.

2006: During an appearance on The Tonight Show, Colin Farrell is confronted by telephone sex worker Dessarae Bradford, who had been stalking the actor.

In 2021 the US, North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, and other states accuse China’s Ministry of State Security of using “contract criminal hackers” to infiltrate Microsoft’s email systems.

2007: The Pakistani Supreme Court rules that President Pervez Musharraf had no authority to suspend Pakistan’s top judge, and orders Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry reinstated.

2009: A UN war crimes court convicts two Bosnian Serb cousins for a 1992 killing spree that included locking scores of Muslims in two houses and burning them alive.

2012: A gunman hurls a gas canister inside a crowded cinema in Colorado during a midnight showing of the new Batman movie (The Dark Knight Rises) and then opens fire, killing 12 people and wounding nearly 60 others.

2013: Americans rally in dozens of US cities, urging authorities to press federal civil rights charges against George Zimmerman, the former neighbourhood watch leader found not guilty in the shooting death of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin.

2014: Patrick Sawyer arrives in the city of Lagos in Nigeria and collapses; he dies of Ebola five days later.

2015: A suicide bomber kills 30 in the Turkish town of Suruc near the Syrian border.

2017: China announces a plan against “foreign garbage,” banning the import of 24 categories of plastic and recyclable waste from 2018.

2018: Australian businessman James Packer announces he has quit 22 directorships due to mental health issues.

2020: Cristiano Ronaldo becomes the first man to score 50 goals in Serie A, La Liga and the Premier League with a double in Juventus’s 2-1 win over Lazio.

2021: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announces his first two Courage and Civility Awards, of US$100 million each, to writer, commentator, and non-profit founder Van Jones; and chef and World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés, for distribution to charities of their choice. The US, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members, and other states accuse China’s Ministry of State Security of using “contract criminal hackers” to infiltrate Microsoft’s email systems.

2022: Geranium, a meat-free restaurant in Copenhagen, is named the world’s best restaurant at a ceremony in London.

2023: India bans the export of non-basmati rice, raising the prospect of global price increases as more than half of rice imports for 42 countries come from India.

2024: American businessman Donald Trump accepts the Republican nomination for president at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee with a 90-minute speech, the longest acceptance speech in history.

TODAY’S
BIRTHDAYS

Alexander the Great, Macedonian king and conqueror of Persia (356-323 BC); Enrique Peña Nieto, president of Mexico (1966- ); Dahlia Duhaney, Jamaican Olympian and IAAF World Championships 4x100m gold medallist (1970- ); Sandra Oh, Canadian actress (1971- ); Gisele Bündchen, Brazilian supermodel (1980- )

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