This Day in History November 3
over 3 years in Jamaica Observer
Today is the 307th day of 2021. There are 58 days left in the year.TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT1992: Bill Clinton defeats President George H W Bush in US presidential election. OTHER EVENTS1394: Charles VI orders Jews expelled from France.1534: England's Parliament confirms King Henry VIII holds all judicial and political powers formerly held by the Pope in England.1900: The first automobile show in the United States opens at Madison Square Garden in New York under the Automobile Club of America.1903: Panama proclaims its independence from Colombia.1918: Poland declares its independence from Russia.1928: Turkey switches from Arabic to Roman alphabet.1946: Power in Japan is transferred from the emperor to elected assembly.1957: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2, the second man-made satellite, into orbit. A dog on-board named Laika is sacrificed in the experiment.1968: Storms, landslides and floods take more than 100 lives and cause heavy damage in northern Italy.1973: UN Emergency Force reports success in easing tension between Egyptian and Israeli troops at positions west of Suez Canal.1986: Ash-Shiraa, a pro-Syrian Lebanese magazine, breaks the story of US arms sales to Iran, a revelation that escalates into the Iran-Contra affair.1993: Bosnian Government troops storm through a Croat district north of Sarajevo, prompting 15,000 terrified civilians to flee into the countryside.1994: A Bosnian refugee, determined to call attention to the slaughter in his homeland, hijacks an airliner only to surrender when he believes the world had heard his plea.1997: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein threatens to shoot down United States planes that are monitoring the disarmament of his country. The threat never materialises.1999: The Government of Yugoslavia's smaller republic, Montenegro, designates the German mark as its official currency, replacing the Yugoslav dinar.2002: The party of moderate President Ibrahim Rugova wins municipal elections in Kosovo, but loses some ground to parties headed by former ethnic Albanian rebels.2003: A 35-member commission unveils a draft constitution, which would be presented to a traditional Afghan 500-member national assembly, the loya jirga, for debate and ratification in mid-December.2004: Ending one of the US Army's longest desertion cases, Charles Robert Jenkins is sentenced to 30 days in a military jail for abandoning his unit in North Korea nearly 40 years ago.2006: Latin American and Caribbean nations endorse Panama for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, after Guatemala and Venezuela withdrew to break a deadlock that dragged through 47 votes.2007: General Pervez Musharraf declares a state of emergency in Pakistan, suspending the constitution, replacing the chief justice before a crucial Supreme Court ruling on his future as president, and cutting communications in the capital.2008: A US military jury at Guantanamo sentences Osama bin Laden's former media aide, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, to life for encouraging terrorist attacks.2009: North Korea claims that it has successfully weaponised more plutonium for atomic bombs, a day after warning Washington to agree quickly to direct talks or face the prospect of a growing North Korean nuclear arsenal.2010: US President Barack Obama signals a new willingness to yield to Republican demands on tax cuts and gets rid of a key energy priority, less than 24 hours after he and fellow Democrats absorbed election losses so severe he called them a shellacking.2011: The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumps by the biggest amount on record, the United States Department of Energy calculates, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.2013: The United States and Egypt try to put a brave face on their badly frayed ties and commit to restoring a partnership undermined by the military ouster of Egypt's first democratically elected president. TODAY'S BIRTHDAYSKarl Baedecker, German guide book compiler-publisher (1801-1859); Andre Malraux, French novelist and cultural minister (1901-1976); Charles Bronson, US actor (1922-2003); Adam Ant, British pop singer (1954- ); Kate Capshaw, US actress (1953- ) - AP