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Today is the 249th day of 2021. There are 116 days left in the year
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2001: The first Air France Concorde plane in more than a year is cleared for commercial flights. The carrier’s fleet had been grounded after a Concorde crashed outside Paris in July 2000, killing 113 people.
OTHER EVENTS
1565: Spanish troops arrive from Sicily, forcing Turks to abandon siege of Malta.
1620: Pilgrims sail on the Mayflower from Plymouth, England, to settle in the New World.
1688: Turks lose Belgrade to Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, whose forces subsequently occupy Bosnia, Serbia and Wallachia.
1901: US President William McKinley is shot and mortally wounded by anarchist Leon Czolgosz (CHAWL’-gawsh) at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He dies eight days later.
1909: American explorer Robert Peary sends a telegram from Indian Harbour, Labrador, that he has reached the North Pole five months early.
1926: Chiang Kai-shek’s forces reach Hankow in his northern campaign in Chinese civil war.
1930: President Hipolito Yrigoyen of Argentina is toppled by a military coup.
1941: Jews over the age of six in Germany are forced to wear yellow stars of David.
1943: Seventy-nine people are killed when a New York-bound Pennsylvania Railroad train derails and crashes in Philadelphia.
1944: The German V-2 missile, the precursor of modern ballistic missiles, is used for the first time, against Paris. During World War II, the British Government relaxes blackout restrictions and suspends compulsory training for the Home Guard.
1965: India invades West Pakistan, the modern-day Pakistan, and bombs city of Lahore.
1966: South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd is stabbed to death by a deranged page during a parliamentary session in Cape Town.
1968: Kingdom of Swaziland gains independence from Britain.
1970: Palestinian guerrillas seize control of three jetliners which are later blown up on the ground in Jordan after the passengers and crews are evacuated. A fourth plane is destroyed on the ground in Egypt. No hostages were harmed.
1972: The Summer Olympics resumes in Munich, West Germany, a day after the deadly hostage crisis that claimed the lives of 11 Israelis and five Arab abductors.
1975: Eighteen-year-old tennis star Martina Navratilova of Czechoslovakia, in New York for the US Open, requests political asylum in the United States. More than 2,300 people are killed by an earthquake in eastern Turkey.
1982: Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon presses Lebanese authorities to conclude a formal peace treaty with Israel. If they do not, he warns, Israel will create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, using some of that country’s land.
1985: All 31 people aboard a Midwest Express Airlines DC-9 are killed when the Atlanta-bound jetliner crashes just after take-off from Milwaukee’s Mitchell Field.
1986: Two Arab terrorists kill 21 Jewish worshippers and themselves in an attack on a synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey.
1991: Soviet Union recognises the independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
1992: Troops in South Africa fire on African National Congress supporters near the Transkei homeland, killing 28 and wounding 200.
1993: Six oil-producing Arab nations give crucial endorsement to the peace deal that would give Palestinians self-rule.
1995: Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken breaks Lou Gehrig’s record by playing his two-thousand-131st consecutive game.
1997: Weeping masses gather in Calcutta, India, to pay homage to Mother Teresa, who had died the day before at age 87. A public funeral is held for Princess Diana at Westminster Abbey in London, six days after her death in a car crash in Paris.
1999: Indonesia imposes martial law in East Timor as thousands of people flee the province and pro-Indonesian militias continue a wave of terror.
2000: The largest gathering of global leaders in history assembles at the UN Millennium Summit to chart an agenda for the 21st century.
2002: Russian authorities discover a mass grave in the Russian republic of Chechnya, near the border of Ingushetia. Seven of the 15 dead were Chechen males who reportedly disappeared when Russian forces swept through their villages. Meeting outside Washington, DC, for only the second time since 1800, Congress convenes in New York to pay homage to the victims and heroes of September 11.
2003: Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas resigns after a prolonged power struggle with Palestinian President Yasir Arafat. Abbas blamed Israel, Arafat and the Administration of US President George W Bush for undermining his Government and causing his peace efforts to fail.
2005: Thousands of people demonstrate in Sao Paulo to protest against corruption, demanding harsh punishment for politicians caught up in a corruption scandal shaking the Administration of Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
2006: Prince Hisahito — Japan’s imperial family’s first male heir since the 1960s — is born in Tokyo. US President George W Bush acknowledges for the first time that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was running secret prisons overseas and said tough interrogation had forced terrorist leaders to reveal plots to attack the United States and its allies.
2008: In the wake of Russia’s military stand-off with Georgia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that it was not the right time for the US to move forward on a once-celebrated deal for civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia. (President George W Bush cancelled the deal two days later.) More than 100 people died in a rockslide that crashed into a shantytown just outside Cairo, Egypt. Actress Anita Page died in Los Angeles at age 98.
2009: Passengers leap into the dark sea and parents drop children into life rafts from a stricken ferry carrying nearly 1,000 people after it capsized in the middle of the night in the southern Philippines, killing nine and leaving 30 missing.
2010: Huge posters plastered across the North Korean capital hail the nation’s biggest political convention in 30 years as a historic event, as the world watches for signs that the country’s next leader is making his public debut.
2013: NASA’s newest robotic lunar explorer, LADEE, rockets into space in an unprecedented moonshot from Virginia that dazzles sky watchers along the East Coast.
2017: Hurricane Irma, the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, pounds Puerto Rico with heavy rain and powerful winds; authorities said more than 900,000 people were without power. A California parole panel recommends parole for Leslie Van Houten, who at 19 was the youngest of Charles Manson’s murderous followers in 1969. (California Governor Jerry Brown later blocked her release.) Pope Francis is welcomed by jubilant crowds along the road from the airport into Bogota, Colombia, where he encourages Colombians to reconcile after five decades of armed rebellion. Two French companies among the world’s biggest makers of luxury goods — including the owners of brands like Dior and Gucci — agree to stop working with fashion models who are unhealthily thin.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Marie Joseph du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, French politician and soldier (1757-1834); Joseph P Kennedy, US businessman and ambassador to England (1888-1969); Louis Federico Leloir, Argentinian Noble-winning biochemist (1906-1987); Rosie Perez, US actress (1964- ); Roger Waters, English rock musician (1943- ); Jeff Foxworthy, actor-comedian (1958- )
— AP
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