Today is the 356th day of 2020. There are 10 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2006: Jamaica National Heritage Trust declares Ackendown Castle ruins, Westmoreland, a national monument. The castle consists of the stone remains of an eastern and western tower connected by what is said to have been an underground passage. The style in which the masonry has been constructed is unusual in Jamaica—rather more medieval in character, making the castle quite unique in this respect.

OTHER EVENTS

1620: Pilgrims go ashore from ship Mayflower at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, in United States.

1817: Governor Lachlan Macquarie formally adopts name “Australia” for British colony.

1851: French plebiscite supports new constitution drawn up by Louis Napoleon.

1898: Radium is discovered by scientists Pierre and Marie Curie.

1942: British 8th Army reoccupies Benghazi in Africa in World War II.

1953: Iran’s former Premier Mohammed Mosadegh is sentenced to three years in prison for trying to lead revolt against shah.

1960: Saudi Arabia’s Premier Emir Faisal resigns, and King Saud takes over government.

1967: Louis Washkansky, first man to undergo heart transplant, dies in Cape Town, South Africa, 18 days after surgery.

1971: Austrian diplomat Kurt Waldheim is chosen secretary general of United Nations.

1972: East and West Germany formally sign treaty ending more than two decades of official enmity.

1979: A Peace agreement is signed, ending seven-year Rhodesian guerrilla war and 15-year rebellion against the British crown.

1988: A Pan Am jet explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people in the air and on the ground. Libyan agents are tried for the bombing.

1989: Nicolae Ceausescu declares state of emergency in Timosoara, Romania, after tens of thousands of protesters fill the streets in mass demonstrations.

1990: Albanian Government orders removal of all statues and symbols bearing Josef Stalin’s name.

1992: A chartered Dutch jumbo jet with 340 people aboard breaks apart and bursts into flames while trying to land in Faro, Portugal, in a storm. Fifty-two travellers and two crew members are killed.

1993: Russian President Boris Yeltsin dissolves the powerful Security Ministry, saying the successor to the KGB secret police failed to warn him of dangerous political currents in Russia.

1995: At least 75 people are killed and 76 injured in Badrshein, Egypt, when a train slams into the Cairo-to-Luxor express.

1998: After a quick trial, Chinese dissidents Xu Wenli and Wang Youcai are sentenced to more than a decade behind bars for trying to register the China Democracy Party.

2000: Security forces and hundreds of leftist prisoners wielding makeshift flame-throwers face off for a third day in Turkish jails in a conflict that has left at least 19 people dead.

2001: Six Palestinians are killed in the Gaza Strip and dozens injured in clashes with Palestinian security forces that erupted at the funeral of a youth killed by Palestinian police the previous day. The violence marks the deadliest fighting among Palestinians since 1994.

2002: A US soldier is killed in a battle with unidentified gunmen in the eastern province of Paktika, near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, making him the first American killed in Afghanistan since May.

2005: Britain’s most famous gay couple — Sir Elton John and Canadian film-maker David Furnish — tie the knot in a much-anticipated ceremony, capping the first week of legalised civil unions for same-sex couples in the United Kingdom.

2006: In the biggest US criminal case involving civilian deaths to come out of the Iraq war, eight Marines are charged in the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians during a bloody, door-to-door sweep in the town of Haditha that came after their comrade was killed by a roadside bomb.

2007: Ignoring works by Matisse, Renoir and Van Gogh, thieves steal two paintings — one by Pablo Picasso and another by Candido Portinari — in the first successful heist in the 60-year history of Brazil’s premier modern art museum.

2010: Iraq seats a freely elected government after nine months of haggling, bringing together the main ethnic and religious groups in a fragile balance that could make it difficult to rebuild a nation devastated by war as American troops prepare for their final withdrawal.

2011: The Barack Obama Administration ramps up its criticism of the Syrian government, accusing it of continuing to “mow down” its citizens despite promises to halt a brutal crackdown on reformers and calling on President Bashar Assad to leave power.

2012: Pope Benedict XVI presses his opposition to gay marriage, denouncing what he described as people eschewing their God-given gender identities to suit their sexual choices in the face of gains by same-sex marriage proponents in the US and Europe.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Benjamin Disraeli, English statesman-author (1804-1881); Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan (1876-1948); Joseph Stalin, Soviet leader (1879-1953); Kurt Waldheim, former Austrian president and UN secretary-general (1918-2007); Kel Nagle, Australian champion golfer (1920-2015); Alicia Alonso, Cuban-born ballerina (1921-2019 ); Jane Fonda, US actress (1937- ); Samuel L Jackson, US actor (1948- ); Julie Delpy, French actress/director (1969- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer