This Day in HISTORY
Today is the 80th day of 2024. There are 286 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1936: Jamaican record producer, composer and singer Lee “Scratch” Perry (Rainford Hugh Perry) was born on this day.
OTHER EVENTS
1760: A 10-hour fire erupts in Boston, destroying 349 buildings and burning 10 ships.
1784: Holland cedes Negapatama and Madras, India, to Britain.
1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential novel about slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is published in the United States.
1854: The Republican Party of the United States is founded at a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin, by opponents to slavery.
1899: Martha M Place of Brooklyn, New York, becomes the first woman to be executed in the electric chair in the United States.
1943: The Polish Governmentin-exile reports that Nazis killed 35,000 Jews during a “liquidation” of the ghettos of five Polish towns.
1948: In the first live, televised symphony performances Eugene Ormandy leads the Philadelphia Orchestra on CBS, followed 90 minutes later by Arturo Toscanini leading the NBC Orchestra on NBC.
1973: Pittsburgh Pirates right fielder Roberto Clemente is elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame, 11 weeks after his death in a plane crash.
1977: Voters in Paris choose former French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac to be the French capital’s first mayor in more than a century.
1987: Italian Air Force General Livio Giorgieri is shot dead by two youth on motorcycle; the attack is attributed to the Red Brigades terrorist group.
1988: Defending champion Mike Tyson beats Tony Tubbs by technical knockout in round two at Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, securing the undisputed world heavyweight champion boxing title.
1992: Iraq backs down under threat of possible air raids, and admits far larger ballistic and chemical arsenals than disclosed earlier.
1993: Russian President Boris Yeltsin declares emergency rule until he can conduct a referendum on whether the people trust him or the hard-line Congress to govern.
1997: Swiss National Bank confirms it helped other neutral European countries to buy millions of dollars worth of Nazi gold during World War II.
1998: The Trans-kalahari Highway, sub-saharan Africa’s first road connecting the Atlantic and Indian Ocean, is opened.
2003: Former US Air Force Sergeant Brian Regan accepts a sentence of life in prison for attempting to sell US defence secrets to China and Iraq.
2004: Thousands of people march in cities across the globe to mark the first anniversary of the war in Iraq, demanding an end to US occupation and the withdrawal of international troops..
2008: Australia commits US$17 million to train Aboriginal nurses and doctors as part of efforts to close a 17-year gap in the life expectancies of indigenous and other Australians.
2010: After the breakdown of contract talks between Unite trade union and the management of British Airways, cabin crews of the airline begin a three-day strike, leading to the cancellation of 1,100 flights.
2012: Disney movie John Carter records one of the largest losses in cinema history with a Us$200-million-dollar writedown.
2013: Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signs Bills that put sweeping new restrictions on the sales of firearms and ammunition.
2016: Barack Obama becomes the first US President to visit Cuba since 1928, arriving for a three-day tour.
2020: After 20 years with the New England Patriots, six-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback Tom Brady officially agrees to move to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on a two-year, Us$50-million, guaranteed deal.
2022: Intense fighting in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol continues as Russian forces encircle the city, trapping 300,000 people.
2023: A Somalian drought may have killed 43,000 people in 2022, half of them children under five, according to new research presented by UNICEF in Mogadishu.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Ovid, Latin poet (43 BC-17 AD); Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian dramatist (1828-1906); Lauritz Melchior, Danish-american operatic tenor (1890-1973); Fred Rogers, US children’s TV personality (1928-2003); Spike Lee, US film-maker (1957- )