Today is the 11th day of 2023 There are 354 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1964: US Surgeon General Luther L Terry announces that cigarette smoking is linked to lung cancer, in his first government report warning that smoking may be hazardous.

OTHER EVENTS

1569: The first lottery in England is drawn in St Paul’s Cathedral under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I.

1874: Gail Borden II, the inventor of condensed milk — which during the American Civil War was in high demand as a ration for Union soldiers — dies at age 72.

1879: The Anglo-Zulu War begins as British Lieutenant General Chelmsford invades Zululand in South Africa.

1892: Painter Paul Gauguin marries Teha’amana, a 13-year-old Tahitian girl.

1922: Insulin is first used on humans to treat diabetes when Frederick Banting injects fellow Canadian Leonard Thompson, aged 14.

1927: Louis B Mayer, head of film studio MGM, announces creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

1935: Aviator Amelia Earhart, one of the world’s most celebrated in her field, begins a trip from Honolulu to Oakland, California, becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean — a distance longer than that from the United States to Europe.

1943: Britain and United States relinquish extraterritorial rights in China.

1960: LaMar Clark sets a pro boxing record of 44 consecutive knockouts.

1962: An avalanche buries a village in the Peruvian Andes and 3,000 people are reportedly killed.

1971: The first “quickie” divorce is granted in the United Kingdom.

1977: France sets off an international uproar by releasing Abu Daoud, a Palestinian suspected of involvement in the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

1991: Hundreds of uniformed Lithuanian nationalists keep an all-night vigil in the republic’s Parliament, saying they are defending it from possible attack by the Soviet army.

1993: The UN Security Council meets to warn Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that he is violating Gulf War ceasefire terms by his unauthorised seizure of weapons in Kuwaiti territory.

1995: An Intercontinental Aviation DC-9 with at least 52 people aboard crashes near Cartagena, Colombia, leaving only one survivor.

1996: A military court in Peru sentences American Lori Berenson to life in prison without parole for her involvement with a pro-Cuban guerrilla group.

1997: Burundian soldiers shoot and kill 126 Hutu refugees trying to break out of a holding camp in north-eastern Burundi.

1998: An armed gang attacks two villages outside Algiers, Algeria, slaughtering 120 people.

1999: Haiti’s President Rene Preval dissolves Parliament after a 22-month impasse with no working Government.

2001: General Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, enters the Santiago military hospital to undergo neurological and mental tests ordered by a judge seeking to try him on human rights charges. The US Army acknowledges that soldiers killed an “unknown number” of South Korean refugees early in the Korean War at No Gun Ri.

2002: The first 20 Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees from the US campaign in Afghanistan arrive at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for possible questioning and trial.

2007: Bangladesh’s President Iajuddin Ahmed declares a state of emergency, steps down as interim leader of Bangladesh’s caretaker government, and postpones the January 22 elections following violent protests by a key political alliance that said it would boycott the vote.

2008: Eleven US soldiers are convicted and five officers disciplined in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. New Zealand mountain climber and explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, who with the Tibetan mountaineer Tenzing Norgay was the first to summit Mount Everest, dies at age 88.

2009: Lawmakers, Muslim groups and the Pakistani public criticise Prince Harry after a British newspaper publishes video footage of him using offensive and racist language.

2012: Motorcycle riders flash by and attach a magnetic bomb onto a car carrying a nuclear scientist working at Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility, instantly killing him and fatally wounding his driver in what Iran calls the latest strike in an escalating covert war.

2014: Israeli general and politician Ariel Sharon, one of the chief participants in the Arab-Israeli wars dies at age 85.

2017: US President-elect Donald Trump says for the first time he accepts Russia was behind the election year hacking of Democrats that roiled the White House racel.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Francesco Parmigianino, Italian artist (1504-1540); Wilton “Bogey” Gaynair, Jamaican jazz musician (1927-1995); Rod Taylor, Australian actor (1930-); John A Macdonald, first prime minister of Canada (1815-1891 ); Mary J Blige, US singer (1971-)

– AP/ Jamaica Observer