Today is the 39th day of 2023. There are 326 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1924: The first US execution by gas takes place at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City.

OTHER EVENTS

1587: Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England after being accused of plotting the murder of her cousin, England’s Queen Elizabeth I.

1872: Viceroy of India Richard Southwell Bourke is stabbed to death by an Afghan prisoner while inspecting a convict settlement on the Andaman Islands.

1910: The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated.

1968: Three college students die in a confrontation with highway patrolmen in Orangeburg, South Carolina, during a civil rights protest against a whites-only bowling alley.

1974: Three US Skylab astronauts return to Earth after a record 84 orbit days.

1975: Soviet spacemen begin training with Americans for joint US-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz flights.

1980: US President Jimmy Carter unveils a plan to reintroduce draft registration.

1990: A punctured oil tanker leaks over 950,000 litres of oil into Pacific.

1991: A Saudi desalination plant is forced to close as a huge oil slick created by the Iraqi destruction of Kuwaiti oil wells hits the coastline.

1992: The US-European Ulysses space probe passes Jupiter.

1994: Head of the French army’s history section is fired over a report that casts doubt on Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s innocence; Dreyfus was arrested for treason in 1894.

1996: A cargo plane crashes into the market in Kinshasa, Zaire, killing at least 350 people.

1997: In Tirana, Albania, police beat protesters but fail to prevent thousands from demonstrating against the Government’s shutdown of get-rich schemes that had eaten up their savings.

1998: New tremors kill 250 people in an area of Afghanistan hit by a quake that killed 4,500 people just days earlier.

1999: Hundreds of dignitaries and heads of state, many of them bitter enemies, attend the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan.

2000: Electronic vandals disrupt some of the Web’s most popular sites, using dozens of powerful computers to spew out a flood of fake data.

2001: Space shuttle Atlantis Astronauts prepare to dock with the international space station 360 kilometres above Earth.

2002: The United Nations ends talks with the Cambodian Government on a genocide tribunal for leaders of the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge communist regime.

2003: Fighting between Russian troops and Chechen rebels leaves six Russians dead while the region’s prime minister, Mikhail Babich, resigns in a dispute with Akhmad Kadyrov eader of the Moscow-backed Administration.

2005: Near England’s south coast Ellen MacArthur ends a 26,000-mile, solo, circumnavigation sailing record after more than 71 days of navigating stormy seas, 65 mph winds, and a broken sail.

2006: Nepal’s first election in seven years is tainted with rebel attacks, the army’s shooting of protesters, and low turnout — dealing a blow to the absolute rule of a king who seized power a year before so as to stamp out insurgents and restore political order.

2007: Colombia’s Constitutional Court rules that gay couples in long-term relationships should have the same rights to shared assets as heterosexual couples, marking the first recognition of gay couples’ rights in this South American nation.

2008: Officials confirm that Amit Kumar, the alleged mastermind of an organ transplant operation in India that illegally removed hundreds of kidneys — sometimes from unwilling donors — is arrested at a jungle resort in southern Nepal.

2009: Zurich voters break with long-standing Swiss policy by ending tax breaks for wealthy foreigners like American singer Tina Turner and Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg.

2010: Iran presses ahead with plans that will increase its ability to make nuclear weapons, as it formally informs the UN nuclear agency of its intention to enrich uranium to higher levels.

2011: A young Google executive who helped ignite Egypt’s uprising energises a cheering crowd of hundreds of thousands with his first appearance in their midst after being released from 12 days in secret detention. “We won’t give up,” he promises at one of the biggest protests yet in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

John Ruskin, English author-artist (1819-1900); Jules Verne, French author (1828-1905); Tunku (Prince) Abdul Rahman Putra Alhaj, first prime minister of independent Malaya (Malaysia) (1903-1990); James Dean, US actor (1931-1955); Captain Horace Burell, late president of the Jamaica Football Federation and former vice-president of CONCACAF. (1950-2017); John Grisham, US author (1955- ); Gary Coleman, US actor (1968-2010)

— Jamaica Observer/AP