Who is popular today?

Today is the 84th day of 2021. There are 281 days left in the year.TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT1958: The first Federal Elections Are held in the West Indies. OTHER EVENTS1305: The Arena (or Scrovegni) Chapel, containing frescoes by Giotto, is consecrated in Padua, Italy.1655: Dutch mathematician and astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovers Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.1807: The British Parliament abolishes the slave trade in the British West Indies.1815: Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia form new alliance against Napoleon Bonaparte after he escapes from confinement on Elba.1957: The Treaties of Rome are signed, establishing the European Community and the European Atomic Energy Community.1965: Rev Martin Luther King Jr leads 25,000 marchers to the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks.1969: Pakistan's President Ayub Khan turns power over to the military after 11 years of leadership.1971: Pakistani troops are deployed in East Pakistan - now Bangladesh - to quell rebels demanding an independent State.1975: Saudi Arabia's King Faisal is assassinated in Riyadh by nephew with history of mental illness. Faisal's brother, Crown Prince Khaled, succeeds to throne.1982: The Canada Act is signed, ratifying the Canadian Constitution and making the country wholly independent of Great Britain.1989: Heads of Egypt, Jordan and Palestine Liberation Organization meet to coordinate Middle East peace strategy.1991: United States says Saddam Hussein has almost succeeded in putting down a rebellion by Shiites in southern Iraq with the help of aircraft flown in violation of the Gulf War ceasefire accord.1992: Returning from a 10-month stay in space, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev is given smelling salts when he learns that the Soviet Union has disintegrated while he was away.1996: The European Union moves to ban British beef, five days after the British Government alerts the public to the danger of eating meat from cows with mad cow disease.1997: Australian Senate votes to overturn the world's only law allowing terminally ill patients to commit suicide with a doctor's help.1998: US President Bill Clinton, on a visit to Rwanda, acknowledges that the US and the world failed to protect Rwandans from the 1994 campaign of genocide that killed half a million people, mostly Tutsis.2002: A 6.1-magnitude earthquake strikes the Hindu Kush region of northern Afghanistan, causing more than 1,000 deaths.2005: American actress Jennifer Aniston (36) files for divorce from actor and film producer Brad Pitt (41) due to irreconcilable differences after 4 and a half years of marriage2007: Iran partially suspends cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency while hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the most recent set of UN sanctions will not halt the country's uranium enrichment "even for a second".2010: Countries that use the euro say they have agreed on a financial backstop for Greece that would combine loans from other Eurozone governments and the International Monetary Fund, a move aimed at stopping the government debt crisis that has undermined the shared currency.2011: A possible breach at Japan's troubled nuclear plant escalates the crisis anew, two full weeks after an earthquake and tsunami first compromised the facility. The development suggests radioactive contamination may be worse than first thought, with tainted groundwater the most likely consequence.2012: The US pays US$50,000 in compensation for each villager killed and US$11,000 for each person wounded in a shooting rampage allegedly carried out by a rogue American soldier in southern Afghanistan.2013: The president of the Central African Republic flees the country for Cameroon after rebels overrun the capital of the impoverished nation long wracked by rebellions.2014: US President Barack Obama declares that a security summit took "concrete steps" to prevent nuclear material from falling into the hands of terrorists, even though Russia and China failed to sign an agreement to beef up inspections TODAY'S BIRTHDAYSJoachim Murat, French soldier and King of Naples (1767-1815); Anne Bronte, English novelist (1820-1849); Arturo Toscanini, Italian-born conductor (1867-1957); Bela Bartok, Hungarian composer (1881-1945); David Lean, British film director (1908-1991); Gloria Steinem, US feminist-editor (1934- ); Elton John, British entertainer-songwriter (1947- ); Sarah Jessica Parker, US actress (1965- ); Aretha Franklin, R and B singer (1942-2018)- AP