Today is the 292nd day of 2026. There are 73 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1973: Tropical Storm Gilda begins three days of heavy rainfall in Jamaica; the highest amount measured in a 24-hour period is 16.2 inches, triggering many landslides across eastern sections of the island.

OTHER EVENTS

1216: King John of England dies at Newark-on-Trent and is succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry III.

1330: English King Edward III, at 17, captures his mother’s lover and the country’s de facto ruler, Roger Mortimer, at Nottingham Castle and later has him hanged.

1722: French C Hopffer patents the automatic fire extinguisher in England.

1925: The Italian army takes Somalia.

1926: John C Garand patents the semi-automatic rifle.

1944: The US Navy announces black women will be allowed into the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES).

1960: The US imposes an embargo on exports to Cuba covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products.

On this day in 1984 Mike McCallum becomes the first Jamaican to win a world boxing title.

1984: Mike “The Body Snatcher” McCallum becomes the first Jamaican to win a world boxing title, at Madison Square Garden, New York, USA.

A young, Polish, pro-Solidarity priest, the Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko, is abducted and murdered by communist secret police.

1987: The stock market crashes as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 22.6 per cent in value — its largest-ever percentage drop in decades.

1992: African National Congress (ANC) President Nelson Mandela acknowledges prisoners in ANC military camps, located in other African countries, had been tortured during the 1980s and early 1990s; the camps had been training sites during the ANC’s guerrilla war against the South African Government.

2000: A suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blows himself up in Colombo, Sri Lanka, minutes before President Chandrika Kumaratunga swears in a new Cabinet to cement her shaky coalition and end a week-long political crisis.

2004: Myanmar’s secretive military regime forces the long-powerful Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt out and places him under house arrest on corruption charges.

2005: Five major American publishing companies file suit against Google, contending that the company’s plan to make searchable digitised versions of library holdings violates publishing copyrights; Google says it plans to make only small parts of copyrighted text available online.

2006: Suicide bombings in the south and east of Afghanistan kill a British soldier, two children and a policeman, as President Hamid Karzai calls on North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces to use caution during military operations a day after 20 civilians are killed.

2007: A global manhunt that began three years before, when police found hundreds of photos on the Internet of a man having sex with a dozen young Asian boys, ends with the arrest in Thailand of Canadian schoolteacher Christopher Paul Neil.

2011: Gordon “Butch” Stewart is honoured with World Travel Awards’ inaugural Tourism Pioneer Award.

Peter Tosh, Jamaican founding member of the Wailers, was born on this day in history, 1944. Tosh passed away in 1987.

2012: A car bomb rips through Beirut, killing a top security official and seven others, shearing balconies off apartment buildings, and sending bloodied residents into the streets during the most serious blast in the Lebanese capital in four years.

2015: US scientists from the University of California find evidence that life on earth may have begun 4.1 billion years before — 300 million earlier than previously thought.

2016: During the third US presidential debate Donald Trump notably refuses to say if he will accept the election result, during a debate with Hillary Clinton at Nevada University, Las Vegas.

2019: Chilean President Sebastián Piñera declares a 15-day state of emergency following widespread and violent protests over a rise in public transport costs.

2020: The USA charges six Russian military officers with a massive cyberattack meant to disrupt the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the 2017 French Presidential Election, and Ukraine’s power grid.

2024: An Israeli airstrike on the Gaza city of Beit Lahia kills at least 87 people.

2025: Thieves disguised as construction workers force open a Louvre museum upper floor window, smash display cases, and flee with eight pieces of Napoleonic jewels worth over US$100 million in the daylight heist.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Auguste Lumiere, Frenchman credited with making the first movie (1862-1948); Peter Tosh (Winston Hubert McIntosh), Jamaican singer-songwriter and founding member of the Wailers (1944-1987); Evander Holyfield, US heavyweight boxing champion (1962- )

– OnThisDay.com/Britannica.com/Jamaica Observer