Today is the 223rd day of 2022. There are 142 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1962: Jamaica’s National Stadium opens for its first-ever post-Independence event — the 9th Central American and Caribbean Games which last until the 25th, and in which 14 countries participate.

OTHER EVENTS

1712: Treaty of Araru ends Swiss War, guaranteeing domination of Protestants over five Catholic cantons.

1786: Penang is ceded to Britain by Rajah of Kedah in Malaya.

1863: French establish protectorate over Cambodia.

1921: Alex Haley, an African American writer best known for The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) and Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976), was born in Ithaca, New York.

1924: The first newsreel of US presidential candidates, which included footage of Calvin Coolidge, John W. Davis, and Robert La Follette, is filmed.

1929: In a game against the Cleveland Indians, Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees hit his 500th career home run, becoming the first baseball player to reach that milestone. Arabs launch attacks on Jews in Palestine over disputes on Jewish use of Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, considered holy by both Jews and Arabs.

1935: Nazi storm troopers stage mass demonstrations against Jews in Germany.

1937: Iraqi dictator Bakr Sidqi is assassinated, a year after he staged the first-ever military coup in modern Arab history.

1942: American actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for an electronic device that minimises the jamming of radio signals; it later becomes a component of satellite and cellular phone technology.

1945: Allies inform Japan that its surrender offer is acceptable as World War II in Pacific nears end.

1950: King Leopold III of Belgium abdicates because of criticism of his actions during World War II. His son Baudouin becomes king the next year.

1952: Prince Hussein is proclaimed King Hussein of Jordan on termination of King Talal’s reign.

1954: Formal peace announcement in Indochina ends more than seven years of fighting with the French and Communist Vietminh. Vietnam is partitioned into North and South.

1965: Race riot begins in the Watts section of Los Angeles, United States, lasting six days. Thirty-four people are killed and more than 1,000 injured.

1973: United States officially ends combat involvement in Indochina, the same day the Viet Cong charge that 71 prisoners of war turned over to them by South Vietnam are not communist supporters but want to return to Saigon.

1977: US Secretary of State Cyrus R Vance returns from the Middle East, failing to get Arab and Israeli leaders to agree on the reconvening of the Geneva peace conference.

1983: The US Agency for International Development agrees to send US$75 million in aid to Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia to help reconstruction efforts following the worst droughts and floods in four decades.

1984: At the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Carl Lewis becomes the third track-and-field athlete to win four gold medals in one Olympics, joining fellow Americans Alvin Kraenzlein (1900) and Jesse Owens (1936).

1988: Anti-government violence spreads to working-class suburbs in Yangon, Myanmar.

1990: Egyptian and Moroccan troops begin arriving in Saudi Arabia to join American forces in trying to deter further Iraqi aggression.

1991: Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon free American hostage Edward Tracy and French hostage Jerome Leyraud.

1992: Heavy fire blasts Sarajevo, and UN officials say about 28,000 people, mostly Muslims, are being forced from their homes in northern Bosnia in one of the biggest single acts of “ethnic cleansing”.

1993: UN forces kill seven Somali gunmen who shot at a surveillance helicopter, as militias of warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid intensify an offensive against peacekeepers.

1995: The Serbian Government disperses bitter Serb refugees driven from Croatia by an army offensive that put an end to the Serb rebellion.

1996: Bosnian Serb troops refuse to let foreign inspectors see a military compound, prompting the NATO-led peace force to recall its representatives from the Bosnian Serb stronghold, Pale.

1997: An international meeting called to rescue Thailand’s shaky economy offers the country US$16 billion in loans.

1998: Congolese rebels fighting President Laurent Kabila say they are closing in on the capital, while the government rounds up Tutsis, suspected of supporting the rebellion.

2002: Clashes among local militias, a rebel group and the Ugandan army kill at least 90 people. The victims, many of whom had been hacked to death, include women and children.

2003: Liberian President Charles Taylor resigns and leaves the country for exile in Nigeria. Taylor’s departure is seen as a major step in bringing peace to the nation, which had been plagued by civil war for 14 years.

2004: Ahmad Chalabi, a former Iraqi Governing Council member who fell out of favour with the United States, returns to Iraq to face counterfeiting charges.

2005: Britain detains and plans to deport 10 foreigners suspected of posing a threat to national security, including Abu Qatada, a Palestinian cleric described as Osama bin Laden’s “spiritual ambassador in Europe”, a British official says.

2006: The UN Security Council adopts a resolution that calls for an end to the war between Israel and Hezbollah, and authorises 15,000 UN peacekeepers to help Lebanese troops take control of south Lebanon as Israel withdraws.

2007: Sierra Leone holds its first presidential elections since UN peacekeepers withdrew two years ago.

2008: Mauritania’s ousted prime minister Yahya Ould Ahmed Waqef defiantly refuses to recognise the African country’s ruling military junta, after he is freed from house arrest under international pressure.

2009: Myanmar’s generals again succeed in isolating democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, but her fleeting emergence during a gruelling trial on charges of violating her house arrest show that her steely resolve and charisma remain intact.

2010: Reasearchers say two ancient animal bones from Ethiopia show signs of butchering by human ancestors, moving back the earliest evidence for the use of stone tools by about 800,000 years.

2011: France, Italy, Spain and Belgium ban short-selling on select stocks amid efforts to calm market turmoil that has sent bank shares gyrating wildly and aggravated worries about Europe’s huge debts.

2013: Israel approves building nearly 1,200 more settlement homes and agrees to release 26 long-held Palestinian security prisoners — highlighting an apparent settlement-for-prisoners trade-off that got both sides back to peace talks after a five-year freeze.

2014: American comedian and actor Robin Williams, who was known for his manic stand-up routines and his diverse film performances, dies by suicide.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

James Bryan Herrick, US cardiologist (1861-1954); Bertram Mills, English circus entrepreneur (1873-1938); Enid Blyton, British author (1897-1968); Alex Haley, US author (1921-1992); Ian Charleston, British actor (1949-1990); Angus Wilson, British author (1913-1991); Hulk Hogan, US wrestler/actor (1953- ); Ali Shaheed Muhammad, hip-hop artiste (1970- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer