Today is the 6th day of 2023. There are 359 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1942: Pan American Airlines becomes the first commercial airline to schedule a flight around the world in the Pacific Clipper.

OTHER EVENTS

1492: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella ride victoriously into Granada after their armies defeat Boabdil, the last Muslim ruler of Spain, completing the Christian reconquest of Spain.

1540: England’s King Henry VIII weds his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves; the marriage ends six months later when she agrees to an annulment.

1639: Virginia orders half of its tobacco crop destroyed to support plunging prices and to avoid an economic catastrophe, the first colony to order the destruction of crops.

1681: The first recorded boxing match is engineered by Christopher Monck (2nd Duke of Albemarle) between his butler and his butcher.

1838: Samuel Morse first publicly demonstrates his telegraph in Morristown, New Jersey.

1912: New Mexico becomes the 47th US state.

1941: US President Franklin D Roosevelt defines the American goal of “Four Freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

1950: Great Britain announces its recognition of the People’s Republic of China.

1979: The Village People’s Y.M.C.A becomes their only UK number one1 single; at its peak it sold over 150,000 copies a day.

1987: Astronomers at the University of California see the first sight of the birth of a galaxy.

1990: Polish Communist leaders vote to disband their party and form a new leftist party under a different name.

1994: Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the leg by an assailant in Detroit; four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan’s skating rival, Tonya Harding, are sentenced to prison.

1998: Fifty-one people die in a train crash in Karna, India.

1999: Rebels fight their way into the capital of Sierra Leone, past a Nigerian-led intervention force, and burn government buildings.

2000: Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin meets Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the Holy Land.

2001: The US Congress certifies George W Bush as the winner of the 2000 presidential election following a legal battle.

2003: The Tamil Tigers rebel group and the Sri Lankan Government hold a round of peace talks, making modest progress toward reconciliation after a 19-year-old civil war but reaching no significant breakthroughs.

2004: Ugandan church leaders tell American supporters of gay bishop Gene Robinson they are not welcome at the consecration of the new leader of Uganda’s Anglicans, Bishop Henry Orombi.

2005: A baby boy is declared China’s 1.3 billionth citizen in a blaze of publicity to promote the Government’s controversial “one child” birth limits.

2006: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatens to seize control of coffee-producing companies, or even nationalise them, if they refuse to sell the product at Government-controlled prices.

2007: Bahraini authorities revoke the citizenship of athlete Mushir Salem Jawher for competing in the Tiberias Marathon in Israel, saying Jawher broke the laws of Bahrain which does not recognise the Jewish State.

2008: Mikhail Saakashvili is elected to a second term as Georgia’s president; thousands of Opposition protesters denounce the election as fraudulent.

2010: A clash off Antarctica between a Japanese whaler and a boat from a protest group partly bankrolled by former American game show host Bob Barker, leaves the anti-whaling vessel badly damaged and each side accusing the other of life-threatening behaviour.

2011: The internationally recognised winner of Ivory Coast’s presidential election asks for special forces to launch a commando operation to remove the country’s defiant sitting president who has refused to cede power five weeks after losing the vote.

2012: The political tensions between the US and Iran over transit in and around the Persian Gulf give way to photos of rescued Iranian fishermen happily wearing United States Navy ball caps.

2014: Iraq’s prime minister urges Fallujah residents to expel al-Qaeda militants so as to avoid an all-out battle in the besieged city.

2021: Supporters of President Donald Trump storm the US Capitol, where Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Joan of Arc, French leader and saint (1412-1431); Max Bruch, German composer (1838-1920); Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-American philosopher (1883-1931); Kim Dae-jung, South Korean president (1925-2009); E L Doctorow, US author (1931-2015 ); Rowan Atkinson, English actor-comedian (1955- ); A R Rahman, Indian composer known as the Mozart of Madras (1966- )

– AP