TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1967: Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the United States Army.

OTHER EVENTS

1521: Holy Roman Emperor Charles V grants his brother, Archduke Ferdinand, the Hapsburg possessions in lower Austria, Carinthia, Styria and Carinola.

1817: The United States and Britain sign the Rush-Bagot Treaty which limits the number of naval vessels allowed in the Great Lakes.

1876: Britain’s Queen Victoria is declared empress of India.

1918: Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the archduke’s wife, Sophie, dies in prison of tuberculosis.

1936: The Arab high command is formed to unite Arabs against Jewish claims.

1945: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci are executed by Italian partisans as they attempt to flee the country.

1952: General Dwight D Eisenhower resigns as supreme allied commander in Europe.

1974: A federal jury in New York acquits former Attorney General John Mitchell and former Commerce Secretary Maurice H Stans of charges in connection with a secret US$200,000 contribution to President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign from financier Robert Vesco.

1976: India’s Supreme Court upholds the right of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Government to imprison political opponents without a court hearing.

1980: US President Jimmy Carter accepts the resignation of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who opposed the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing American hostages in Iran.

1988: Soviet-backed Afghan troops shell border areas, killing 15 Pakistanis.

1989: Students in South Korea fight police after authorities ban their march to the North Korean border.

1992: A new, smaller Yugoslavia is established by Serbia and Montenegro after four other republics — Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia — secede.

1994: Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who betrayed US secrets to the Soviet Union, pleads guilty to espionage and tax evasion; he is sentenced to life in prison without parole.

1996: A gunman slaughters 35 tourists near the ruins of a colonial prison in Tasmania, Australia. .

1999: Peru’s President Alberto Fujimori orders armoured troop carriers and 20,000 police into the streets to control the first protest against his economic policies.

2001: A Russian rocket lifts off from Central Asia bearing the first space tourist, California businessman Dennis Tito, and two cosmonauts on a journey to the International Space Station.

2003: Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline PLC, the world’s largest producer of AIDS drugs, announces it will reduce the price of its popular AIDS medication Combivir to US$0.90 a day, down from US$1.70, in 63 developing countries.

2004: Macedonia’s liberal prime minister Branko Crvenkovski wins the presidential election with 62 per cent of the votes cast but his conservative opponent Sasko Kedev, who garners 37 per cent, claims voter fraud and demands the ballot be annulled.

2005: Iraq’s National Assembly approves the country’s first democratically elected government, a Shiite-dominated body that excludes the Sunni minority from meaningful positions and threatens efforts to dampen the deadly insurgency.

2008: Austrian Josef Fritzl, 73, confesses to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in a windowless cell with a soundproof door and fathering her seven children; he also tells investigators he tossed the body of one of the children in an incinerator when the infant died after birth.

2011: A moderate Palestinian president plays down concerns that his emerging alliance with militant Hamas will undermine peace negotiations with Israel.

2012: Syria derides UN chief Ban Ki-moon as biased and calls his comments “outrageous” after he blames the regime for widespread ceasefire violations..

2013: The fugitive owner of an illegally constructed building that collapsed and killed at least 377 people in Bangladesh is captured by a commando force as he tries to flee to India.

2015: Nigerian troops rescue nearly 300 girls and women during an offensive against Boko Haram militants in the north-east Sambia forest; those rescued do not include any of the schoolgirls kidnapped a year earlier from Chibok.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Yi Sun-shin, Korean admiral and national hero (1545-1598); Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, Portuguese dictator (1889-1970); Kurt Goedel, Austrian-born US mathematician (1906-1978); Harper Lee, US author (1926-2016); Alfred Louis Valentine, Jamaican cricketer (1930-2004); Saddam Hussein, Iraqi dictator (1937-2006); Madge Sinclair, internationally acclaimed Jamaican actress (1938-1995); Ann-Margret, Swedish-born actress (1941- ); Jay Leno, American former Tonight Show host (1950- ); Elisabeth Rohm, German actress (1973- ); Penelope Cruz, Spanish actress (1974- ); Harry Shum Jr, Costa Rican actor (1982- ); Jenna Ushkowitz, South Korean actress (1986- );

– AP/Jamaica Observer