THE WALL

Today’s Highlight

Today is Marcus Garvey Birthday. Marcus Garvey, Jamaican political leader/journalist/orator/philosopher (1887-1940).

Other Events

1743: Sweden cedes southern Finland to Russia in the Peace of Abo.

1759: British fleet under Admiral Boscawen defeats the French off Cape St Vincent in the West Indies. 1887: Black nationalist, philosopher, entrepreneur and the first person to be declared a national hero in Jamaica, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr is born in St Ann’s Bay.

1896: Gold is discovered in Klondike territory, Canada, attracting 100,000 adventurers in a two-year rush.

1945: Sukarno proclaims Indonesian independence, but it is refused by the Dutch.

1954: Two-thousand religious pilgrims drown in a flash flood at the Muslim shrine of the Imam Zadeh Davud in Farahzad, Iran.

1962: East German border guards shoot and kill an 18-year-old who attempted to cross over the Berlin Wall into the western sector.

1964: Congolese Premier Moise Tshombe appeals to five African nations to help put down rebellion in the Congo.

1972: – Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan offers an interim peace agreement with Egypt based on a truce line dividing the Sinai Peninsula.

1976: Tidal wave on Philippine island of Mindanao leaves estimated 8,000 people dead or missing.

1980: Diplomatic officials close the British Embassy in Iran because of hostile demonstrations.

1988: Pakistan’s President Zia ul-Haq and US Ambassador Arnold Raphel are killed when their Pakistani military plane explodes.

1990: Iraq announces policy of holding foreign nationals in Iraq and Kuwait as human shields against attack.

1991: Italy repatriates the last of an estimated 18,000 Albanian refugees who arrived in southern Italy by boat earlier in the month. The Italian government admitted the offer of asylum was a ruse to persuade Albanians to give up their often-violent resistance. Only 154 refugees stayed in Italy.

1998: The impoverished Russian government devalues the ruble and defaults on billions of dollars in debt, causing a collapse in financial markets; President Clinton admits to an affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

1999: A powerful 7.4 earthquake hits western Turkey, killing at least 17,200 and injuring more than 20,000. Officials estimate that the numbers are higher; many families buried relatives without notifying authorities.

2001: A protest in Guyana over the recent shooting deaths of three Muslims leave four persons dead after police open fire on the protesters.

2005: Russian navy ships and longrange bombers head to a Chinese peninsula jutting into the Yellow Sea for the first-ever joint military exercises between the two countries.

2006: Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemns a US airstrike that Afghan officials say killed 10 border policemen.

Today’s Birthdays

Pierre de Fermat, French mathematician (1601-1665); Jan III Sobieski, king of Poland (1629-1696); William Carey, English pioneer missionary (1761-1834); Marcus Garvey, Jamaican political leader/journalist/orator/philosopher (1887-1940); Mae West, US actress (1892-1980); Maureen O’Hara, Irish-born actress (1920-); V(idiadhar) S(urajprasad) Naipaul, Trinidadian writer (1932-); Robert DeNiro, US actor (1943-); Sean Penn, US actor (1960-).