Today is the 3rd day of 2024. There are 363 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS

1997: A Rwandan court sentences two Hutu men to death, the first verdict related to the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans, most of them Tutsis, in 1994.

1995: World Health Organization (WHO) announces the number of AIDS cases reported has officially passed the one-million mark.

OTHER EVENTS

1521: Martin Luther, the German priest whose questioning of certain Roman Catholic practices initiated the Protestant Reformation, is excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.

1648: English military leader Oliver Cromwell condemns King Charles I before Parliament.

1795: A secret treaty takes place between Russia and Austria for the third partition of Poland.

1868: The Meiji Restoration re-establishes the authority of Japan’s emperor and heralds the fall of the military rulers known as shoguns.

1921: The first Indian Parliament meets.

1925: Benito Mussolini, prime minister and leader of Italy’s Fascists, assumes responsibility for the murder of an Opposition politician and dares Parliament to prosecute him; he launches a crackdown that dissolves the Italian Parliament and proclaims himself dictator of Italy, taking the title Il Duce (The Leader).

1938: The March of Dimes campaign to fight polio is organised in the United States.

1954: The formation of a tobacco industry committee to investigate charges that cigarette smoking contributes to lung cancer is announced by 14 major companies.

1958: Jamaica becomes a founding member of the West Indies Federation.

1961: The United States severs diplomatic relations with Cuba.

1974: Kuwait reaches an agreement with the Gulf Oil and British Petroleum companies for a 60 per cent takeover in the Gulf State.

1977: The International Monetary Fund gives the largest loan in its 30-year history — almost US$4 billion — to the British Government. Apple Computer is incorporated in Cupertino, California, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Mike Makkula Jr.

1985: Israel reluctantly concedes it mounted an airlift to relocate large numbers of Ethiopian Jews from the famine-wracked country to Israel.

1987: Aretha Franklin becomes the first female artiste to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

1990: Ousted Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega surrenders to US forces, 10 days after taking refuge in the Vatican’s diplomatic mission.

1993: US President George H W Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign an arms control treaty to reduce nuclear weapons by two-thirds.

1994: A Russian passenger jet crashes and explodes in flames in a snowy field at a livestock farm in Siberia, killing all 120 people aboard.

1995: Tamil separatist rebels and government negotiators in Sri Lanka agree to a ceasefire; the rebels release four policemen held captive for more than four years.

1999: Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif escapes an apparent assassination attempt when a bomb explodes on a bridge as he is about to pass; four die in the explosion.

2000: Assailants protesting Russia’s crackdown on Chechnya fire rocket-propelled grenades at the Russian Embassy in Beirut; a policeman and a Palestinian attacker die. Acting Russian President Vladimir Putin fires Tatyana Dyachenko, daughter of former President Boris Yeltsin; Dyachenko had wielded enormous power in the Kremlin, maintaining links to a number of controversial businessmen.

2001: International Paper Co agrees to sell — in Adirondacks, northern New York — three tracts of land totalling 26,500 acres to The Nature Conservancy, an organisation concerned with environmental preservation; the price is US$10.5 million.

2003: Street protests turn deadly in Caracas, Venezuela, as police struggle in vain to separate battling supporters and opponents of President Hugo Chavez; at least two people are shot to death and 78 others are injured.

2005: President George W Bush enlists two former presidents, his father George H W Bush and Bill Clinton, for an ambitious, private, fund-raising drive for victims of the deadly tsunamis in South Asia.

2006: Argentina pays off its remaining debt to the International Monetary Fund and terminates its relationship with the organisation.

2007: Myanmar’s military Government frees 2,831 prison inmates, including about 20 political prisoners, ahead of the 59th anniversary of its independence from Britain.

2008: James H Billington, the US librarian of Congress, announces the appointment of Jon Scieszka, author of The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, to the newly created position of ambassador for young people’s literature.

2009: The Bitcoin network is created as the first block of the digital currency is mined by a person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto.

2010: Western embassies in Yemen close after fresh threats from al-Qaeda.

2011: Iran invites Russia, China, the European Union, and its allies among the Arab and developing world to tour its nuclear sites, in an apparent move to gain support ahead of a new round of talks with six world powers.

2012: The Taliban announce they will open an office in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar to hold talks with the United States — an unprecedented step toward a peace process that might lead to a winding down of the 10-year war in Afghanistan.

2013: A car bomb in Al-Musayyib, Iraq, kills at least 28 Shi’ite pilgrims returning from a religious observance in Karbala’.

2014: Tommy Lynn Sells is executed at Texas State Penitentiary, Huntsville, for the murder of nine-year-old Mary Perez; Sells is thought to have committed 21 more murders.

2016: Jimmy Butler breaks Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls record for points in an NBA half, scoring 40 of his 42 points in the second half to lead the Bulls in a 115-113 victory over the Toronto Raptors.

2018: A previously unknown ancient Beringians group of people is unearthed in Alaska, the earliest known Native Americans at 11,500 years old.

2019: Archaeologists in Mexico announce their discovery of a pre-Aztec temple to the god Xipe Tótec in Puebla State (dated 900-1150 AD).

2022: Apple becomes the first US company to be worth US$3 trillion in value, after tripling its price in under four years. Elizabeth Holmes, founder of blood-testing start-up Theranos, is found guilty on four counts of fraud in San Jose, California.

2023: Cristiano Ronaldo joins Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr for the “biggest salary ever in football”, leaving Manchester United after criticising it publicly.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Italian musician (1710-1736); David W Griffith, pioneer US film producer (1875-1948); J R R (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien, British fantasy writer (1892-1973); Victor Borge, Danish pianist-humorist (1909-2000); Sergio Leone, Italian director (1929- ); Mel Gibson, US-Australian actor (1956- ); Michael Schumacher, German race car driver (1969- )

AP/Jamaica Observer