Today is the 306th day of 2026. There are 59 days left in the year

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1988: A computer science student named Robert Morris releases, from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) computer, the first Internet-distributed computer worm to gain mainstream media attention; meant as an experiment, it instead brings some 6,000 computers (one-tenth of the Internet) to a halt as it infects MIT, the Pentagon, and six universities.

OTHER EVENTS

1841: The Second Afghan War starts when Afghans massacre British army officers.

1898: Cheerleading begins in the United States as Johnny Campbell leads the crowd cheering on the football team at the University of Minnesota.

1917: In the Balfour Declaration, the British Government declares it favours the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

1930: Tafari Makonnen takes the name Haile Selassie as he is crowned His Imperial Majesty, the King of Kings of Ethiopia, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God.

1951: Bolivia receives a US$1-million Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) loan to expand production of tungsten for sale in the US.

1960: In a landmark British trial, a jury rules that D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover is not obscene, thereby allowing Penguin Books to publish the work in its entirety; an expurgated version had previously been released.

1962: US President John F Kennedy announces an end to the Cuban missile crisis, saying the Soviet Union is dismantling bases in Cuba.

1963: South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated by his own troops during a coup.

US President John F Kennedy announces, this day in 1962, an end to the Cuban missile crisis.

1964: King Saud of Saudi Arabia is deposed, and Faisal is proclaimed king.

1967: White mercenaries and black troops invade Congo from Portuguese Angola.

1972: Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter defeats Republican incumbent Gerald R Ford, becoming the first US president from the Deep South since the Civil War.

1983: Michael Jackson’s song Thriller is released as a single; the album of the same name, released in 1982, becomes the best-selling album of all time and still holds that position to date.

US President Ronald Reagan signs a Bill establishing a federal holiday to honour civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr on every third Monday in January.

South African white voters approve, by a two-to-one margin, a new constitution that, for the first time, accords Coloureds and Asians a limited voice in government.

1988: The Government imposes a nationwide night curfew in Sri Lanka after attacks by radical Sinhalese leave at least 16 people dead; the Sinhalese group opposes an accord that would grant a measure of autonomy to Tamils if the guerrillas lay down their arms.

1990: Militiamen in the Soviet republic of Moldavia shoot and kill six people and wound 30 during an ethnic clash.

1992: Basketball star Magic Johnson retires for a second time from the Los Angeles Lakers — just five weeks after the guard, who has HIV, announces he would return to the National Basketball Association (NBA).

1993: Sarajevo shivers in frigid temperatures as Bosnian Serbs block United Nations engineering crews from repairing vital electrical lines.

1994: A river of fire ignited by an oil tank explosion surges through a village in southern Egypt, killing more than 410 people.

1996: A United States Air Force F-16 fighter plane fires a missile at an Iraqi radar site while in the “no-fly” zone over southern Iraq.

In 1930 Tafari Makonnen takes the name Haile Selassie and becomes emperor of Ethiopia.

1998: Chaos and looting erupt in Central America following Hurricane Mitch, which kills more than 7,000.

1999: Prominent Zulu prince, Cyril Zulu, mayor-designate of Durban, South Africa, is assassinated by an unknown gunman.

2001: Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Protestant Government faces imminent suspension or collapse after two Protestant lawmakers refuse to support their leader, David Trimble’s re-election bid as Government leader.

2003: The US Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire installs as its bishop Reverend V Gene Robinson, consecrating the first openly homosexual Anglican bishop and drawing censure from numerous provinces within the worldwide Anglican Communion.

2007: Morocco recalls its ambassador from Spain after King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia announce plans to visit two Spanish enclaves in North Africa; Morocco’s claim to them is a consistent sore spot in bilateral relations.

2008: Hundreds of people march through Belarus’s capital to remember the victims of Stalinist purges and call for an end to repression in a country that still has many of the trappings of the former Soviet Union.

2009: US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton moderates her praise for Israel’s offer to restrain building settlements in Palestinian areas, in the face of Arab criticism of the Administration’s recalibrated Mideast peace tack.

2010: Britain and France strike a historic defence deal aimed at preserving military muscle in an age of austerity, pledging to deploy troops under a single command, share aircraft carriers, and collaborate on once fiercely guarded nuclear programmes.

2011: Greece’s prime minister goes to the French resort of Cannes to explain to his furious European colleagues why he is holding a surprise referendum on a bailout deal that took all of them months to work out.

2012: A video that appears to show a unit of Syrian rebels kicking terrified, captured soldiers and then executing them with machine guns raises concerns about rebel brutality at a time when the United States is pushing to forge an Opposition movement it can work with.

2014: Some 60 people are killed and 110 injured by a suicide bombing in Lahore, Pakistan.

“King of Pop” Michael Jackson’s song Thriller is released as a single in 1983.

2018: A tiger thought to have killed 13 people is shot dead after a month-long hunt near Pandharkawada, central India.

2020: Gunmen storm Kabul University, Afghanistan, shooting at least 22 dead, with the Islamic State group claiming responsibility.

Baby Shark by Pinkfong becomes the most-watched video on YouTube with over 7.04 billion views.

2021: Former United States police captain Eric Adams becomes the second elected African American mayor of New York.

2022: The US Federal Reserve hikes interest rates for a fourth-straight time to a range of between 3.75 per cent and 4.00 per cent — its highest since 2008 — in an effort to fight ongoing inflation.

2023: The Bletchley Declaration to assess and manage risks of ‘frontier’ artificial intelligence (AI) is signed at the AI Safety Summit, hosted by Rishi Sunak at Bletchley Park, United Kingdom.

2024: Kemi Badenoch becomes the first black woman to lead a major British political party when she is elected leader of the Conservative Party.

2025: George Banks, American mass murderer who killed 13 people in Pennsylvania, dies of cancer at 83.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Noel Newton Nethersole, Jamaican Rhodes scholar and former minister of finance, politician, lawyer and cricketer (1903-1959); Odysseus Elytis, pseudonym of Odysseus Alepoudelis, Greek poet and Nobel laureate (1911-1996); Gerry Alexander, Jamaican former cricketer and last white captain of the West Indies cricket team (1928-2011); David Schwimmer, US actor (1966- )

— OnThisDay.com/Britannica.com/Jamaica Observer