Today is the 54th day of 2023. There are 311 days left in the year.

TODAY’ S HIGHLIGHT

2015: At least five drones fly over the Eiffel Tower, the US Embassy, and other Paris landmarks, the most audacious of several mysterious drone flights around France in recent months as authorities continue to investigate.

OTHER EVENTS

1455: Johannes Gutenberg prints his first Bible.

1573: An Irish rebellion is crushed with the surrender of James Fitzmaurice.

1574: France begins the fifth war of religion (“holy war”) against the Huguenots.

1660: Sweden’s King Charles IX executes leaders of the pro-Polish party for treason.

1689: Dutch prince William III is proclaimed King of England.

1782: Inventor, chemist and engineer James Watt’s patent for a rotary motion for the steam engine (his sun-and-planet gear) is granted.

1813: The first US raw cotton-to-cloth mill is founded in Waltham, Massachusetts.

1820: The Cato Street conspiracy to murder a British Cabinet minister is discovered.

1821: British romantic poet John Keats dies at the age of 25 from tuberculosis. The College of Apothecaries is organised in Philadephia as the first US pharmacy college.

1836: During the Texas war for independence, Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna begins a siege of the Alamo, which was captured after 13 days and which became, for Texans, a symbol of heroic resistance.

1846: Polish revolutionaries march on Kraków but are defeated.

1861: US President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrives secretly in Washington to take office after an assassination plot is foiled in Baltimore.

1870: Mississippi is readmitted to the United States following the American Civil War.

1874: Major Walter Clopton Winfield patents a game called sphairistike (lawn tennis).

1886: The Times of London newspaper publishes the world’s first classified ad. The aluminum manufacturing process is developed.

1887: The French/Italian Riviera is struck by an earthquake; 2,000 die.

1892: The first college student government forms at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

1895: Dutch cyclist and speed skater Jaap Eden skates a world record 10km (17:56); Eden is the only male athlete to win world championships in both speed skating and cycling.

1896: The Tootsie Roll is introduced by Leo Hirshfield.

1900: The steamer Rio de Janeiro sinks in San Francisco Bay.

1901: Britain and Germany agree on a boundary between German East Africa and Nyasaland.

1903: The US and Cuba sign an agreement by which Cuba releases Guantanamo and Bahia Hondo to the US for naval stations.

1904: The United States acquires control of the Panama Canal Zone for US$10 million. Having occupied Korea, Japan signs a treaty with Korea under which it becomes a Japanese protectorate in return for Japanese protection from other powers.

1905: The first Rotary Club is formed by four men in the Unity Building, Chicago; among them is Chicago attorney Paul P Harris.

1927: US President Calvin Coolidge signs a Bill creating the Federal Radio Commission, forerunner of the Federal Communications Commission.

1933: Japan begins occupation of China, north of the Great Wall.

1934: Nicaraguan rebel leader Cesar Augusto Sandino, invited to meet with army leader and later dictator Anastasio Somoza, is abducted and murdered.

1938: The first oil discovery in Kuwait is made.

1940: Walt Disney’s animated movie Pinocchio released.

1942: A Japanese submarine shells an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, California.

1947: US General Eisenhower opens a drive to raise US$170 million in aid for European Jews.

1954: The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine begins in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1963: Luciano Pavarotti makes his debut at the Vienna State Opera in La traviata.

1968: Wilt Chamberlain becomes the first NBA player to score 25,000 points.

1964: Britain recognises President Abdul Amari Karume’s regime in Zanzibar, renamed Tanzania.

1967: Noam Chomsky’s anti-Vietnam war essay The Responsibility of Intellectuals is published by the New York Review of Books.

1970: Guyana becomes a republic (National Day).

1990: Prince Sihanouk returns to Cambodia after 11 years in exile.

1991: The military junta seizes power in Thailand after a bloodless coup.

1996: Two sons-in-law of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein are killed by clan members following their return to the country after defecting.

1998: Leftist guerrillas set off a mine in India, killing five soldiers sent to guard polling stations and raising the death toll related to the parliamentary election to 29. Osama bin Laden publishes a fatwa declaring jihad against all Jews and crusaders.

1999: The first peace talks between Kosovo Albanians and Yugoslavia end in Rambouillet, France, without much progress toward a settlement; NATO suspends its threat of bombing until the talks resume on March 15.

2000: Mexican-born musician Carlos Santana wins eight Grammy Awards for Supernatural, tying the record set by Michael Jackson.

2007: Forty-six countries sign a declaration in Oslo pushing for a global ban on cluster bombs, a move activists hail as a major step forward, despite opposition from the US, Russia, Israel and China.

2009: The first Guantanamo detainee released since President Barack Obama took office returns to Britain, saying his seven years in captivity were a nightmare.

2012: UN-appointed investigators in Geneva say they have compiled a list of Syrian officials accused of crimes against humanity that reaches as high as President Bashar Assad.

2013: Tens of thousands of people march to protest austerity measures introduced by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a bid to reduce the deficit, ease market pressures on government borrowing, and avoid a full financial bailout.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

George Frederick Handel, German composer (1685-1759); Sir George Frederick Watts, English artist (1817-1904); W.E.B. Du Bois, American sociologist and social reformer (1868-1963); Kazimir Malevich, Ukraine avant-garde painter (1878- ); Brad Whitford, American guitarist for Aerosmith (1952- ); Carlene Davis, Jamaican gospel and reggae singer (1953- ); Naruhito, emperor of Japan (1960- ); Kristin Davis, US actress (1965- )

— AP/ Jamaica Observer