This is the 51st day of 2023. There are 314 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2013: The Barack Obama Administration in the US announces a broad new effort to fight the growing theft of American trade secrets following fresh evidence linking cyber stealing to China’s military.

OTHER EVENTS

1280: The Japanese Imperial Court orders all temples and shrines to pray for victory in the impending second Mongol invasion.

1437: Scotland’s King James I is murdered by would-be usurpers in the Scottish city of Perth.

1570: Lord Hunsdon defeats Leonard Dacre’s rebel army, ending the Northern Rebellion in England.

1792: US President George Washington signs an Act creating the US Post Office, with postage of US$ 6 cents 12 cents depending on distance.

1809: The US Supreme Court rules the power of the federal Government is greater than that of any individual state.

1872: New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art opens.

1631: German Protestant princes form an alliance with Sweden’s King Gustavus II, setting the stage for Swedish entry into the Thirty Years’ War.

1673: The first recorded wine auction is held in London.

1811: Austria declares bankruptcy.

1833: Russian ships enter Bosphorus on the way to Constantinople — today’s Istanbul — to aid Turkey against Egypt.

1835: Concepcion, Chile, is destroyed by earthquake and 5,000 die.

1929: The US Congress formally accepts the deeds of cession of eastern Samoa, forming American Samoa.

1933: The US House of Representatives completes Congressional action on an amendment to repeal Prohibition (the ban on the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages).

1937: Jamaican newspaper the Public Opinion is launched.

1942: The Japanese invade the island of Bali in the Dutch East Indies during World War II.

1943: The volcano Paricutín in Michoacán state, Mexico, erupts and eventually buries two villages.

1947: A chemical mixing error causes an explosion that destroys 42 blocks in Los Angeles, United States.

1947: Earl Mountbatten of Burma is appointed the last viceroy of India to oversee the move to independence.

1964: Morocco and Algeria sign an accord to end a border conflict which resulted in troop clashes.

1967: Indonesia’s President Sukarno surrenders all executive power to General Suharto, keeping only the title of president.

1975: The Greek Cypriot Government calls on the United Nations to fix a deadline for the withdrawal of 40,000 Turkish troops from that island.

1988: A rainstorm triggers floods and mudslides in Rio de Janeiro that kill 65 people and leave up to 100 elderly hospital patients missing and feared dead.

1990: England announces it will unilaterally lift the ban on new investments in South Africa.

1991: Slovenia’s legislators vote overwhelmingly to initiate secession from Yugoslavia. At least 19 people die as a Chilean airliner bound for Antarctica crashes into a freezing channel.

1992: Israeli troops break through UN barricades in Lebanon to attack rocket-launching Shiite militias.

1996: General Hussein Kamel, son-in-law of President Saddam Hussein, returns to Iraq after having defected to Jordan. He is killed along with his relatives a few days later.

1999: Atal Bihari Vajpayee becomes the first Indian prime minister to go to Pakistan in 10 years when he rides the first commercial bus service between the two countries in 51 years.

2001: The United States Supreme Court declines to consider an appeal by five major oil companies against Unocal’s patent on the production of cleaner, “reformulated” gasoline sold in California.

2002: A fire breaks out on a crowded train travelling from Cairo to Luxor in southern Egypt, killing 373 people and injuring 60 in the worst train disaster in Egyptian history.

2003: A fire sparked by heavy-metal band Great White’s pyrotechnic display kills 100 people and injures more than 180 others at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island.

2004: A police commission audit says that Atlanta under-reported crimes for years to help land the 1996 Olympics and pump up tourism.

2005: The Irish Government identifies three top Sinn Fein figures — including leader Gerry Adams — as members of the Irish Republican Army command. American journalist and author Hunter S Thompson — who created the genre known as gonzo journalism, a highly personal style of reporting that made him a counterculture icon — dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

2008: Space shuttle Atlantis and its crew return to Earth, wrapping up a five-million-mile (eight-million-kilometre) journey highlighted by the successful delivery of a new European lab to the international space station.

2011: Libyan protesters defy a fierce crackdown by Moammar Gadhafi’s regime, returning to a square outside a court building in the flashpoint city of Benghazi to demand the overthrow of the long-time ruler.

2013: The Barack Obama Administration in the US announces a broad new effort to fight the growing theft of American trade secrets following fresh evidence linking cyber stealing to China’s military. Former US Representative Jesse Jackson Jr enters a guilty plea in federal court to criminal charges that he had engaged in a scheme to spend US$750,000 in campaign funds on personal items; his wife, Sandra Jackson, pleads guilty to filing false joint federal income tax returns.

2014: Protesters advance on police lines in the heart of Kiev, prompting government snipers to shoot back and kill scores of people in Ukraine’s deadliest day since the break-up of the Soviet Union.

2017: Thousands of demonstrators turn out across the US to challenge Donald Trump in a Presidents’ Day protest dubbed Not My President’s Day.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Sir William Cornwallis, English admiral (1744-1819); Lucien Pissarro, French artist (1863-1944); Sidney Poitier, American actor (1927- ); Kurt Cobain, American rocker and lead singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter of grunge band Nirvana (1967-1994); Trevor Noah, South African comedian (1984- ); Rihanna, Barbadian singer (1988- )

– AP/ Jamaica Observer