Today is the 146th day of 2022. There are 219 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2011: A pale and shrunken Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander, is hauled into a courtroom after 16 years on the run to face charges of genocide in ordering the torture, rape and the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.

OTHER EVENTS

1521: Martin Luther is banned by the Edict of Worms (vohrms) because of his religious beliefs and writings.

1865: Surrender of last Confederate troops at Shreveport, Louisiana, ends US Civil War.

1868: The US Senate impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson ends with his acquittal as the Senate is one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.

1887: British East Africa Company is chartered.

1924: US President Calvin Coolidge signs Bill limiting immigration into United States, completely excluding Japanese.

1940: Evacuation of British troops from France in the face of a German invasion begins at Dunkirk.

1942: German forces begin their drive for Stalingrad and the Caucasus in World War II.

1948: South Africa elects a nationalist Government under D F Malan, with an apartheid policy.

1954: Funeral ship of Pharaoh Cheops is discovered in Egypt near the Pyramid of Giza.

1964: China rejects appeal by Britain to help halt fighting in Laos.

1966: British Guiana becomes independent nation of Guyana.

1967: EMI rush releases The Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in London and select markets in the UK, prior to nation-wide release; it would go to number one for 15 weeks in the US and for 22 weeks in the UK.

1969: The Apollo 10 astronauts return to Earth after a successful eight-day dress rehearsal for the first manned moon landing.

1977: George H Willig scales the outside of the South Tower of New York’s World Trade Center; he is arrested at the top of the 110-storey building.

1979: Israel formally returns sovereignty of Sinai capital of El Arish to Egypt after a dozen years of occupation.

1987: Sri Lankan troops begin major offensive against Tamil separatist rebels in the northern Jaffna Peninsula.

1990: Boris Yeltsin fails to win majority in balloting for Russian presidency.

1991: Austrian airliner bound for Vienna explodes and crashes into the jungle in Thailand, killing all 223 people on board.

1992: Russia’s Constitutional Court orders Mikhail Gorbachev, or a stand-in, to represent the Communist Party on its right to exist.

1994: US President Bill Clinton renews trade privileges for China, and announces his Administration will no longer link China’s trade status with its human rights record.

1996: Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi opens a meeting of Opposition activists in Yangon, Myanmar, in defiance of the military government which then arrests scores of people.

1998: A member of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, Ikuo Hayashi is found guilty of murder in the nerve gas attack that killed 12 people in the Tokyo subway. He is sentenced to life in prison.

2001: The African Union replaces the 38-year-old Organization of African Unity. The move is meant to bring political and economic integration, similar to the European Union, for 53 African member nations.

2003: The World Health Organization (WHO) reclassifies Toronto, Canada, as an area with recent local transmissions of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), after Canadian health officials inform the WHO of eight new probable cases of the virus.

2004: The United States Army veteran Terry Nichols is found guilty of 161 state murder charges for helping to carry out the Oklahoma City bombing.

2005: President George W Bush embraces Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as a courageous democratic reformer and bolsters his standing at home with US$50 million in assistance to improve the quality of life in Gaza.

2007: Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern’s long-dominant party, Fianna Fail, celebrates its sixth-straight election win.

2008: Ethiopia’s Supreme Court sentences an exiled former president — dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam — and 18 officials to death for the thousands of people murdered during Mengistu’s 17-year rule.

2009: President Barack Obama chooses federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic justice on the US Supreme Court.

2010: Jamaican security forces claim a tenuous hold over the slum stronghold of an at-large gang leader sought by the US, but only after nearly three days of street battles that killed at least 44 civilians.

2013: Two rockets hit Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut, tearing through an apartment building and peppering cars with shrapnel, a day after the Lebanese group’s leader pledged to lift President Bashar Assad to victory in Syria’s civil war.

2015: Challenging Hillary Rodham Clinton from the left, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders formally kicks off his Democratic presidential bid in Burlington, Vermont, with a pitch to liberals to join him in a “political revolution” to transform the nation’s economy and politics.

2021: Amazon says it will buy 97-year-old film and television studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for US$8.45 billion.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, English general (1650-1722); Isadora Duncan, US dancer (1877-1927); Al Jolson, US singer/actor (1886-1950); Alexander Pushkin, Russian writer (1799-1837); John Wayne, US actor (1907-1979); Hank Williams Jr, US country singer (1949- ); Lenny Kravitz, US rock singer (1964- ); Helena Bonham Carter, British actress (1966- ); Joseph Fiennes, British actor (1970-).

– AP and Jamaica Observer