This Day in History April 2

about 3 years in Jamaica Observer

Tomorrow is the 92nd day of 2021. Thereafter there will be 273 days left in the year.
TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT
1982: Several thousand troops from Argentina seize the disputed Falkland Islands, located in the south Atlantic, from Britain. (Britain seized the islands back the following June.)
 
OTHER EVENTS
1513: In searching for the Fountain of Youth, Spaniard Ponce de Leon discovers Florida, but does not realise it is part of mainland North America.
1792: US Congress passes the Coinage Act, which authorises establishment of the US Mint and allows the government to make its own money.
1932: Aviator Charles A Lindbergh and John F Condon goes to a cemetery in The Bronx, New York, where Condon turns over $50,000 to a man in exchange for Lindbergh's kidnapped son. (The child, who was not returned, was found dead the following month.)
1962: The charter creating The University of the West Indies (formerly the University College of the West Indies) is passed.
1968: Film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the groundbreaking science-fiction epic produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, has its world premiere in Washington, DC.
1992: Mob boss John Gotti is convicted in New York of murder and racketeering; he is later sentenced to life, and dies in prison.
1998: Maurice Papon, a Vichy official and later Cabinet minister in post-war France, is sentenced to 10 years in prison for deporting Jews during World War II.
2002: Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf meets with Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai, in the first visit by a Pakistani leader in more than 30 years. The two indicate they plan to mend relations and work together to promote stability in Afghanistan.
2003: US President George W Bush's Administration announces sanctions against a nuclear research laboratory in Pakistan for having helped North Korea to develop nuclear weapons.
2005: Pope John Paul II, who helped topple communism in Europe and left a deeply conservative stamp on the church that he led for 26 years, dies at age 84 in his Vatican apartment, ending a long public struggle against debilitating illness.
2008: President George W Bush suffers a diplomatic setback when North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies rebuff his pleas to put former Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia on the path toward membership.
2009: Anxiously assembled at the most perilous moment for the global economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the world's financial powers pledge more than US$1 trillion for emergency loans to combat spreading chaos.
2010: Rescue workers attempting to reach 153 miners trapped in a flooded coal pit in China's Shanxi province report "signs of life" including tapping, banging and shouting as relatives allege cover-up of incident.
2012: Gulf states develop a plan to funnel millions of dollars a month to Syrian rebels who could use the amount as a blank check to build up their arsenals.
2013: UN General Assembly approves first UN treaty regulating multi-billion-dollar international arms trade. North Korea says it will restart its long-shuttered plutonium reactor and increase production of nuclear weapons material in what outsiders saw as its latest attempt to extract US concessions by raising fears of war.
2017: US President Donald Trump takes Senator Rand Paul to his Virginia golf course to talk health policy with the outspoken critic of the failed plan to repeal and replace so-called Obamacare.
 
TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS
Charlemagne, Emperor of the West (742-814); Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer (1805-1875); William Holman Hunt, English artist (1827-1910); Emile Zola, French author (1840-1902); Max Ernst (1891-1976); Buddy Ebsen, US actor (1908-2003); Sir Alec Guinness, British actor (1914-2000); Emmylou Harris, US country singer (1947- ) Garnett Silk (born Garnet Damion Smith) Jamaican reggae music (1966-1994)
- AP/Jamaica Observer

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