This Day in HISTORY
Today is the 31st day of 2021. There are 335 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1938: George Phillip, the Grenadian former executive director for Sandals Resorts International and Jamaica Observer, industrial relations specialist, and corporate stalwart is born this day.
OTHER EVENTS
1606: Guy Fawkes, convicted for his part in the “Gunpowder Plot” against the English Parliament and King James I, is executed.
1709: British sailor Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, is rescued after being marooned on a Pacific island for four years.
1747: The first venereal diseases clinic opens at London Lock Hospital, London.
1865: The US House of Representatives joins the Senate in passing the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery.
1945: Private Eddie Slovik becomes the only US soldier since the American Civil War to be executed for desertion.
1949: The first US TV daytime soap opera, These Are My Children, is broadcast from the NBC station in Chicago.
1950: US President Harry Truman publicly announces support for the development of a hydrogen bomb
1962: Foreign ministers of the Organization of American States vote to exclude Cuba from participating in the interamerican system.
1966: The Soviets launch
Luna 9, which makes the first successful soft landing on the moon.
1985: South African President P W Botha offers to free Nelson Mandela if he denounces violence.
1990: The first Mcdonald’s in Russia opens on Moscow’s Pushkin Square with approximately 38,000 customers waiting for hours in long lines, breaking company records at the time.
1997: Mexican drug kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego is sentenced to 11 concurrent life prison terms and fines that total nearly US$500 million.
2003: The American Red Cross quarantines almost all of its blood supply for the state of Georgia, and some of South Carolina, because of unidentified white particles that had been found in some bags of donated blood.
2008: Pop star Britney Spears is taken from her home by ambulance to UCLA Medical Center, where she is held for a week for psychiatric evaluation.
2009: In Australian Open women’s tennis Serena Williams wins her 10th Grand Slam singles title when she outclasses Dinara Safina of Russia 6-0, 6-3.
2012: Leonard Cohen releases his album Old Ideas which becomes number one in 10 countries.
2013: A gas explosion causes three floors of the headquarters of Mexico’s national oil company Pemex to collapse, killing 37 people.
2015: A 17-year-old, Lydia
Ko of New Zealand, becomes the youngest golfer in men’s or women’s golf history to be ranked number one in the world
2016: “World’s Best Chef” Benoît Violier, who was Frenchswiss, is found dead after an apparent suicide, mere weeks after being named world’s best by La Liste.
2017: The Romanian Government passes an emergency decree to release prisoners and decriminalise corruption charges, triggering huge protests in Bucharest.
2018: Houston guard James Harden becomes the first player in NBA history to log a 60-point triple-double with 60 points, 10 rebounds, 11 assists, four steals, and a block in Rockets’s 114-107 win over Orlando Magic.
2019: Colonisation of the America’s in the late 1500s killed so many people it cooled the planet and led to a “Little Ice Age”, according to a scientific report published in Quaternary Science Reviews. WHO reports that at least 20 newborns and children died in the prior two months from the cold while trying to get to Al-ho Syrian refugee camp. Catholic leaders in Texas name 286 priests and others accused of sexually abusing children, dating back to 1940.
2020: The United Kingdom formally leaves the European Union, more than three years after the country voted for “Brexit”.
2022: Online word puzzle Wordle is bought for a “low, seven-figure sum” by The New
York Times.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Franz Schubert, German composer (1797-1828); Anna Pavlova, Russian ballerina
(1885-1931); Jackie Robinson, American baseball playetr who broke the colour barrier in Major League Baseball (MLB) when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 (1919-1972);
Lester Sterling, Jamaican saxophonist, trumpeter, and founding member of the
Skatalites (1936-2023); Portia de Rossi, Australian-american former actress (1973- ); Kerry Washington, US actress
(1977- ); Justin Timberlake, US singer (1981-)