This Day in HISTORY
TODAY’S HGHLIGHT
1949: The first Emmy Awards are presented; only six categories are recognised and nominated shows are limited to those that air in the Los Angeles area.
OTHER EVENTS
1945: In an effort to prevent tooth decay, Grand Rapids, Michigan, becomes the first US city to add fluoride to its water system.
1961: US President John F Kennedy holds the first presidential news conference carried live on radio and television.
1971: Charles Manson and three female followers are convicted in Los Angeles of murder and conspiracy in the 1969 slayings of seven people; their crimes inspired the bestselling book Helter Skelter in 1974.
1975: Sheik Mujibur Rahman abolishes parliamentary rule in Bangladesh and assumes absolute powers as president.
1981: The 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days return home.
1989: Cambodia’s Premier Hun Sen rejects the proposal for an international peacekeeping force in his country.
1992: Russian President Boris Yeltsin says Russia will stop targeting US cities with nuclear missiles.
1993: Two French UN peacekeepers are killed and three wounded as Serb-croat clashes rage on in southern Croatia.
1994: Michael Jackson settles a lawsuit regarding the molestation of a young boy without admitting guilt, the terms of which settlement leave the boy “very happy”, the youngster’s attorney says.
1995: Jews from around the world return to Auschwitzbirkenau, the Nazis’ biggest death complex where 1.5 million people were killed before it was liberated 50 years prior.
1998: The pope holds a sermon on the virtues of democracy in Havana, Cuba, with dictator Fidel Castro in the audience.
1999: An earthquake devastates a coffee-growing region in Colombia, killing at least 940 people.
2000: Former Tehran Mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschimayor, serving a two-year jail term for embezzlement after running afoul of the hard-line leadership, is pardoned by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
2001: Israel and the Palestinians continue to make good progress in drawing the borders of a future Palestinian State, negotiators announce.
2005: Outspoken, former communist-era Government spokesperson Jerzy Urban is convicted of libel and fined for insulting the Polish-born Pope John Paul II in his satirical magazine.
2006: Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crowd polling stations in their first parliamentary elections in a decade; Hamas emerges as winner — a stunning victory for Islamic radicals.
2007: Russian President Vladimir Putin offers to build four new nuclear reactors for energy-starved India, cementing his country’s traditional role as India’s main nuclear benefactor.
2008: A car bomb rips through eastern Beirut killing three plus Lebanon’s top anti-terrorism investigator who was probing the assassinations of prominent anti-syrian figures.
2010: Suicide bombers strike in quick succession at three Baghdad hotels favoured by Western journalists, in wellplanned assaults that kill at least 37 people and wound more than 100.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Edmund Campion, English Jesuit (1540-1581); Robert Burns, Scottish poet (17591796); Virginia Wolff, English author (1882-1941); Witold Lutoslawski, modern Polish composer and conductor
(1913-1994); Etta James, US blues singer (1938-2012); Paul Foreman, Jamaican Olympian (1939-2020 ); Alicia Keys, US R&B singer (1981- )