TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1942: Three members of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi group that advocated nonviolent resistance, are beheaded in Munich.

OTHER EVENTS

1774: The British House of Lords rules authors do not have perpetual copyright.

1879: Frank Winfield Woolworth opens a US$5-cent store in Utica, New York.

1888: “Father of American Golf” John Reid first demonstrates golf to friends on a Yonkers cow pasture.

1907: The first cabs with taxi meters begin operating in London.

1934: It Happened One Night opens at NY’s Radio City Music Hall; it wins the Academy Awards for best picture, director, actor, actress and screenplay in 1935.

1942: Tribesmen in the Philippines wipe out a Japanese regiment during World War II.

1966: Uganda’s Prime Minister Milton Obote orders five Cabinet members arrested and assumes full power.

1967: Sir Donald Sangster is appointed prime minister of Jamaica.

1975: The military Government of Ethiopia announces 2,300 guerrillas have been killed fighting in Eritrea.

1990: The last Stalin statue topples in Mongolia’s capital Ulan Bator.

1991: US President George Bush demands Saddam Hussein begins unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait by noon the following day or risk ground war with allied forces.

1992: Shiite militias in Lebanon agree not to fire rockets into Israel, ending a week of heavy fighting with Israeli troops.

1994: US authorities say the CIA’s former top Soviet spycatcher Aldrich Hazen Ames actually spied for the Soviet Union; he is later sentenced to life in prison.

1995: France accuses five Americans of political and economic spying and orders them to leave the country.

1997: Some 30,000 Rwanda and Burundi refugees flee their refugee camp in eastern Zaire due to fighting. A team of British scientists announce the birth of the first clone of an adult mammal, Dolly the sheep.

1998: Tamil separatist rebel gunboats attack a 12-ship convoy carrying soldiers to northern Sri Lanka, killing up to 80 people.

1999: Fighting between ethnic Albanians and the Yugoslav army flares in Kosovo as a peace talks deadline in France nears.

2001: In a landmark human rights decision the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia find three Bosnian Serb soldiers guilty of raping, torturing and enslaving Muslim women during the 1991-95 ethnic conflicts between the Serbs, Croats and Muslims in Bosnia.

2002: Angolan officials say government troops killed Jonas Savimbi, leader of the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), in a gun battle between soldiers and rebel members.

2006: Insurgents disguised as police trigger bombs inside one of Iraq’s most famous Shiite shrines, triggering reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques.

2007: The UN nuclear watchdog announces findings Iran expanded its uranium enrichment programme instead of complying with a UN Security Council ultimatum to freeze it, clearing the way for harsher sanctions against Tehran.

2009: European leaders uniting against a global economic crisis propose stricter market regulation and caps on executive salaries.

2012: Syrian gunners pound the Opposition stronghold housing an American-born war correspondent highlighting civilians caught in the relentless shelling, killing her and a French photojournalist.

2017: Jay-Z becomes the first rapper to be inducted into the the Songwriters Hall of Fame alongside Max Martin, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

George Washington, first US president (1732-1799); Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788-1860); Frederick Chopin, Polish composer (1810-1849); John Mills, British actor (1908-2005); Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Central African Republic president (1921-1996); Steve Irwin, Australian naturalist and TV star (1962-2006);

– AP/Jamaica Observer