Today is the 361st day of 2021. There are four days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1831: The Christmas Rebellion begins at Kensington Estate, Montego Bay.

OTHER EVENTS

1741: Prussian forces take Olmutz, Czechoslovakia; Spanish troops land in Tuscany, Italy.

1794: French troops invade Holland.

1831: Naturalist Charles Darwin sets out on a voyage to the Pacific aboard the HMS Beagle. His discoveries during the voyage helped form the basis of his theories on evolution.

1927: Joseph Stalin’s faction wins at All-Union Congress in Soviet Union, and Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Communist Party.

1932: Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City.

1944: In World War II, Soviet forces surround Budapest; US forces smash across the German Bulge in Belgium and relieve US troops under siege at Bastogne.

1945: Foreign ministers of Britain, United States, and Soviet Union meet in Moscow and call for provisional democratic government in Korea; the World Bank is created with an agreement signed by 28 nations.

1949: The Netherlands’ Queen Juliana grants Indonesia sovereignty after more than three centuries of Dutch rule.

1956: United Nations fleet begins clearing the Suez Canal after the Suez War.

1964: Congo Government charges that officers from Algeria and the United Arab Republic are leading Congolese rebels on Congo’s north-eastern border.

1969: Libya, Sudan, and United Arab Republic (the short-lived union of Egypt and Syria) announce political, economic, and military agreement in Tripoli.

1970: The musical Hello, Dolly ! closes on Broadway after a run of 2,844 performances.

1972: Australia halts military aid to South Vietnam, ending its involvement in the Vietnam War.

1979: Soviet forces seize control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, is replaced by Babrak Karmal.

1985: American naturalist Dian Fossey, who studied gorillas in the wild, is found hacked to death at a research station in Rwanda. Terrorists strike at holiday travellers in simultaneous attacks on Israel’s El Al airline at Rome and Vienna airports, killing 16 people and wounding more than 100.

1987: Ferocious gun battle erupts in crowded market in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka, after suspected separatist Tamil rebels fatally shoot policeman. At least 25 people are reported killed.

1989: US soldiers blast rock music and news bulletins about Panama at Vatican embassy in Panama City in attempt to drive General Manuel Noriega from refuge there.

1990: After being recalled days earlier, Iraq’s ambassadors return to their posts calling for “serious and constructive dialogue” on Persian Gulf crisis.

1992: The United States shoots down an Iraqi fighter aircraft when two Iraqi warplanes “turned to confront” US F-16 jets in United Nations-restricted airspace over southern Iraq.

1994: Suspected Muslim militants in Algiers kill four Catholic priests.

1996: Some 60,000 jubilant opposition supporters defy riot police to rally in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, buoyed by international mediators who upheld their victory over President Slobodan Milosevic in local elections.

1997: Billy Wright, one of the most feared Protestant guerrilla leaders in Northern Ireland, is shot and killed in prison by inmates belonging to an Irish Republican Army splinter group.

1999: Alfonso Portillo of the right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front wins the country’s first peacetime presidential election in nearly 40 years.

2000: Animal rights activists toss eggs and jeer as hunters and hounds pursue foxes across a frigid British countryside in traditional post-Christmas hunts.

2002: Three unidentified men driving a heavy military truck penetrate the defences surrounding the pro-Russian Government’s headquarters in Grozny, capital of Chechnya, and detonate more than a ton of explosives, killing 63 people and injuring 178.

2005: Israeli aircraft fire missiles on two offices of the militant Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and an overpass the army says militants cross to reach launching grounds for rocket attacks.

2006: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules state lawmakers cannot be compelled to vote on a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage.

2007: Pakistan Opposition Leader Benazir Bhutto, 54, is killed by an attacker who shot her after a campaign rally and then blew himself up. The Government later says she died from a skull fracture suffered when her head slammed against her car. At least 20 others are also killed.

2008: International aid agencies warn that Zimbabwe’s humanitarian crisis is deepening, with a sharp rise in acute child malnutrition and a worsening cholera epidemic.

2009: A Nigerian man’s claim that his attempt to blow up a US plane originated with al-Qaeda’s network inside Yemen deepens concerns that instability in the Middle Eastern country is providing the terror group with a base to train and recruit militants for operations against the West and the US.

2010: Corruption charges against one of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s most trusted political advisers provide the latest evidence of deep rifts within the Iranian president’s own conservative political camp.

2011: Surprised airport workers in Argentina find hundreds of wriggling poisonous snakes and endangered reptiles inside the baggage of a Czech man who was about to board a flight to Spain.

2012: Mexico City’s Government tries to transform one of the world’s largest cities by beautifying public spaces, parks, and monuments buried beneath a sea of honking cars, street hawkers, and grime following decades of dizzying urban growth.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Johannes Kepler, German astronomer (1571-1630); Louis Pasteur, French scientist (1822-1895); Louis Bromfield, US novellist (1896-1956); Marlene Dietrich, German actress (1901-1992); John Amos, US actor (1939- ); Cokie Roberts, US newsperson (1943-2019); Gerard Depardieu, French actor (1948- ); T S Monk, jazz drummer/vocalist (1949- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer