This Day in HISTORY
Today is the 134th day of 2024. There are 232 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1991: A South African judge convicts Winnie Mandela of kidnapping four young men and being an accessory in their beating.
OTHER EVENTS
1939: Bomb explosions, attributed to the I.R.A., occur in London subways.
1953: Australia and the US signed 3 conventions designed to prevent double taxation in respect of income, estate and gift taxes.
1946: Fifty-eight operators of the Mauthausen concentration camp are convicted by a US military court in Dachau for torture and murder of thousands of imprisoned victims, and are sentenced to die on the gallows.
1974: In a two-day referendum Italian voters overwhelmingly support the retention of the threeyear-old law permitting divorce; the vote is considered a blow to the ruling Christian Democrat Party which wanted the law repealed.
1981: Pope John Paul II is shot and seriously wounded in Rome by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turk; Eastern European intelligence agencies are suspected to be behind the attack on the Polishborn pontiff.
1985: A confrontation between Philadelphia authorities and the black radical group MOVE ends as police drop an explosive onto the group’s headquarters; 11 people die in the resulting fire.
1989: Approximately 2,000 students begin a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square, China.
1992: Election officials in Manila ban the media from reporting unofficial vote counts.
1994: Israeli troops leave Jericho after 27 years, giving the Palestinian Authority control over its first West Bank town. Erik Erikson, American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst who coined the phrase identity crisis, dies at 91.
1995: Angry crowds burn schools, government buildings and Hindu temples in the Himalayan state of Kashmir, in apparent retaliation for the destruction of a 15th-century Muslim shrine.
1998: Riots break out in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta after students were killed by police the previous day. President Suharto cuts short a State visit to Egypt. India sets off two more nuclear explosions, in defiance of international condemnation.
1999: With foreign reporters invited to watch, Yugoslavia withdraws 120 of its estimated 40,000 troops from Kosovo;
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) calls the pull-out insignificant and air strikes continue.
2000: The Vatican ends an enduring mystery, saying the third secret of Fatima — which the Virgin Mary is said to have told three children in 1917 — was a foretelling of the shooting of Pope John Paul II in 1981.
2001: Cuban leader Fidel Castro Malnaysdia leaves after his first State visit to that country; the visit is part of Castro’s efforts to bolster support for Cuba which was languishing under a fourdecade US embargo.
2002: The United States and Russia announce they have reached agreement on a pact committing them to cut their arsenal of nuclear weapons by two-thirds over the next 10 years.
2003: Michael Richardson, British investment banker and advisor to Margaret Thatcher who was known as Mr Privatisation, dies at 78. France is paralysed as more than one million people walk off their jobs and march in the streets to demonstrate their disagreement with proposed reforms to the State pension system; the reforms are intended to prevent a funding crisis in the fairly near future.
2004: A French lawyer, Jacques Verges, claiming to represent a nephew of Saddam Hussein, says he has filed suit at the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes by British military leaders in Iraq. The final episode of Frasier on NBC is watched by 33 million people. President Sam Nujoma of Namibia and Pres.ident Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia officially dedicate a highway and bridge across the Zambezi River connecting the two countries; the projects are part of the Trans-caprivi Highway that provides an Atlantic port link to landlocked countries of southern Africa.
2005: Soldiers loyal to Uzbekistan’s authoritarian leader open fire on thousands of demonstrators to put down an uprising; witnesses say that more than 700 people, most of them peaceful demonstrators, are killed by the troops. The Government contends the uprising was encouraged by Islamic extremists and puts the death toll at 187. Anti-american protests gain in intensity in Afghanistan and Pakistan and spread to Indonesia and Palestine; at least eight protesters in Afghanistan are killed.
2007: The Taliban’s most prominent military commander, Mullah Dadullah, a one-legged fighter who orchestrated an ethnic massacre and a rash of beheadings, is killed in a Us-led military operation in southern Afghanistan.
2008: The US National Endowment for the Arts announces that the winners of its first annual Opera Honors awards are directors James Levine and Richard Geddes, composer Carlisle Floyd, and soprano Leontyne Price; each will receive US$25,000.
2009: European Union fines Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, a record US$1.45 billion for using strong-arm sales tactics.
2010: A rogue army general working with anti-government protesters is shot in the head while talking to reporters in downtown Bangkok, triggering more clashes that leave one demonstrator dead and worsen Thailand’s political chaos.
2011: A double-taliban suicide attack that kills 66 paramilitary police recruits represents the deadliest terrorist strike in
Pakistan since the killing of Osama bin Laden. It sends a strong signal that militants mean to fight on and try to avenge the al-qaeda leader.
2012: Forty-nine decapitated and mutilated bodies are found dumped on a highway connecting the northern Mexican metropolis of Monterrey to the US border, in what appears to be the latest blow in an escalating war of intimidation among drug gangs.
2016: Chance the Rapper releases his third mixtape Coloring Book on Apple Music - the first album to chart on the Billboard
Top 100 based only on streams; the mixtape also won the Grammy for Best Rap Album.
2018: Dennis Nilsen, Scottish serial killer, dies at 72.
2019: Actress Felicity Huffman pleads guilty for her part in the US college admissions scandal. American singer and actress Doris Day — whose performances in movie musicals of the 1950s and sex comedies of the early 1960s made her a leading Hollywood star — dies at age 93. Sri Lanka imposes a nationwide curfew from 9:00 pm to 4:00 am to curb violence against Muslims after the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks.
2021: American CDC says people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can stop wearing masks.
2023: At the 67th Eurovision Song Contest, Loreen wins for Sweden for the second time, singing Tattoo; held in Liverpool, England, the contest is hosted on behalf of Ukraine
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Pius IX, Italian pope (17921878); Witold Pilecki, Polish Resistance fighter (1901-1948); Dame Daphne du Maurier, English novelist-playwright (1907-1989); Joe Louis, former US heavyweight boxing champion (1914-1981); Bea Arthur, US actress (19222009); James Warren Jones (Jim Jones), founder of the Peoples Temple cult (1931-1978); Ritchie Valens, American singer and songwriter and first Latino rock and roll star (1941-1959); Stevie Wonder, US pop singer (1950- ); Dennis Rodman, basketball player (1961- ); Ethlyn Tate, Jamaican Olympian (1966- ); Robert Pattison, English actor (1986- )