Today in history
1494 — Christopher Columbus discovers Jamaica.
1791 — Polish Parliament approves Europe’s first modern constitution.
1841 — New Zealand is formally proclaimed a British colony.
1898 — Bread riots erupt in Milan, Italy, and are crushed with heavy loss of life.
1937 — Margaret Mitchell wins a Pulitzer Prize for her novel Gone with the Wind.
1945 — Allied troops enter Hamburg, Germany, in World War II; Indian forces capture Rangoon, Burma, from the Japanese.
1947 — Japan’s new postwar Constitution, reflecting the policies of Allied occupiers, takes effect.
1948 — The United States Supreme Court rules that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.
1972 — Turkish guerillas hijack Turkish plane and land in Sofia, Bulgaria.
1979 — Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain’s first female prime minister.
1997 — The rebels of the Guatemalan Revolutionary Unit surrender the last of their weapons to the government, marking the end of one of Latin America’s most drawnout wars.
2001 — Ronnie Biggs, fugitive robber of Britain’s 1963 ‘‘Great Train Robbery’’ says he is ready to return home to face justice after three decades of exile in Brazil.
2003 — James Miller, British freelance journalist and producer of International award-winning documentaries, Beneath the Veil, and Innocents Lost, is shot and killed by Israeli military tank in the Gaza Strip.
2004 — The US military reprimands seven officers in the alleged abuse of inmates at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, the first known punishments in the case.
2006 — An Armenian airliner carrying 113 people tumbles into the Black Sea harbour of the Russian resort of Sochi.
2007 — At least 21 workers are kidnapped in separate attacks in Nigeria’s oil-rice delta region, leaving a Nigerian soldier dead.
2008 — Cyclone Nargis strikes Burma, killing at least 78,000 and leaving 56,000 others missing.
2014 — US Secretary of State John Kerry presses Russia to stop backing separatists in eastern Ukraine after the pro-russian insurgents release seven European military observers. Today’s Birthdays: Betty Comden, US songwriterentertainer (1919-2006); Sugar Ray Robinson, US boxer (1920-1989); James Brown, US soul musician (1933-2006); Frankie Valli, American singer (The Four Seasons) (1934-); David Hookes, Australian cricketer (1955-2004); Christina Hendricks, American actress (1975-)