Today is the 333rd day of 2021. There are 32 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1961: Enos the chimp is launched from Cape Canaveral aboard the Mercury-Atlas 5 spacecraft, which orbits Earth twice before returning.

OTHER EVENTS

1580: Sir Francis Drake returns to England from circumnavigating the globe.

1880: First Japanese Diet convenes.

1890: The first US Army-Navy football game is played, with navy defeating army 24-0 at West Point, New York.

1918: Nicholas, King of Montenegro, is deposed, and the kingdom is united with Serbia.

1922: Archaeologists announce they have found fabulous treasures in the tomb of Tutankhamen in Egypt.

1929: US Navy Lieutenant Richard E Byrd radios that he has made the first aeroplane flight over the South Pole.

1945: Communist state is proclaimed in Yugoslavia, and monarchy is abolished.

1947: United Nations announces plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab entities, with Jerusalem under United Nations control.

1958: Eleven more people are sentenced to death for their part in Nigerian political riots in March, bringing the number up to 48.

1964: Several hundred thousand people demonstrate in Beijing against United States involvement in the Congo, calling it aggression.

1973: More than 100 people perish in a department store fire in Kumamoto, Japan.

1976: Following refusal by Palestinian guerrillas to surrender their weapons, Syria attempts to disarm the former combatants in the Lebanese Civil War to avoid a possible military confrontation with Israel on the southern border.

1987: A Korean Air jet with 115 people on board disappears over Myanmar. A North Korean agent is arrested in Bahrain and confesses to planting a bomb on her Government’s orders to disrupt the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

1989: Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci flees to Hungary. In response to a growing pro-democracy movement in Czechoslovakia, the Communist-run Parliament ends the party’s 40-year monopoly on power.

1990: UN Security Council adopts resolution allowing use of “whatever means necessary” to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait if Iraqi forces are not withdrawn and all foreign hostages released by January 15.

1993: Israeli troops capture the commander of the military wing of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organiazation faction after Palestinian militants go on a shooting spree.

1994: The US House of Representatives approves the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

1995: Carrying banners and signs, thousands of Serbs protest the unification of Sarajevo.

1996: The Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands, passes its first sentence, giving a 25-year-old Croat soldier, Drazen Erdemovic, a 10-year prison sentence for his role in the massacre of 1,200 Muslims in Bosnia.

1997: France passes a nationality law that allows citizenship for children born in France of foreign parents.

1999: Northern Ireland’s rival parties form a Protestant-Catholic Government that requires bitter enemies to share power for the first time in history.

2001: Representatives of the diamond industry and more than 30 governments agree to certify all legitimate shipments of rough diamonds in an unprecedented effort to weed out the trade in gems that has been used to fund civil wars in Africa.

2003: Britain grants refugee status to Akhmed Zakayev, a representative of the separatist Government-in-exile from the Chechnya region in Russia. Britain ruled against extradition, citing the likelihood that Zakayev would be tortured by Russian authorities if he was returned.

2004: China moves to expand its influence in a region long dominated by the United States, signing an accord with Southeast Asian nations aimed at creating the world’s largest free trade area by 2010 — a sprawling market of nearly two billion people.

2005: Israeli elder statesman Shimon Peres hints he will leave the Labour Party, his political home of 60 years, to join forces with Ariel Sharon.

2006: Officials find traces of radiation on two British Airways jets, and the airline appeals to tens of thousands of passengers who flew to Moscow or other cities to come forward — a twist in the inquiry into the poisoning death of a former Russian spy.

2008: Thousands of Roman Catholic faithful and President Raul Castro gather for the beatification of Friar Jose Olallo Valdes, a monk known as the “father of the poor” — the first ceremony of its kind on Cuban soil.

2009: Iran approves plans to build 10 industrial-scale uranium enrichment facilities, a dramatic expansion of the programme in defiance of UN demands it halt enrichment, and a move that is likely to significantly heighten tensions with the West.

2011: Hard-line Iranian protesters storm British diplomatic compounds, hauling down the Union Jack, torching an embassy vehicle, and pelting buildings with petrol bombs in what began as an apparent State-approved show of anger over the latest Western sanctions to punish Tehran for defiance regarding its nuclear programme.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Giovanni Bellini, Italian artist (1426-1516); Gaetano Donizetti, Italian opera composer (1797-1848); Christian Doppler, Austrian physicist (1803-1853); Louisa May Alcott, US writer (1832-1888); Kim Delaney, US actress (1961- ); Joel Coen, US director (1954- ); Don Cheadle, US actor (1964-); Dr Cynthia Thompson, 1948 Olympic 100m finalist & 200m semi-finalist (1922- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer