Today is the 116th day of 2023. There are 249 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1986: The Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Soviet Union, explodes and causes radioactive fallout to spew into the atmosphere in the world’s worst nuclear accident; hundreds of thousands of civilians are exposed to dangerous radioactive material and 32 people die immediately.

OTHER EVENTS

1933: Nazi Germany’s infamous secret police, the Gestapo, is created.

1937: In the Spanish Civil War, German planes bomb the town of Guernica, killing between 1,000 to 1,650 people; painter Pablo Picasso later immortalises their suffering in one of his masterpieces.

1964: The African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.

1966: Mt Kelud in Java, Indonesia, erupts, killing 1,000 people.

1977: Studio 54 opens in New York.

1994: Voting begins in South Africa’s first all-race elections, resulting in victory for the African National Congress and the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as president.

1997: Banners of loyalty and life-size images of Saddam Hussein adorn Iraq’s capital, as Iraqis begin seven days of festivities in celebration of his 60th birthday.

1998: Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera in Guatemala is bludgeoned to death two days after a report he compiled on atrocities during the country’s 36-year civil war was made public.

1999: The Chernobyl computer virus damages hundreds of thousands of computers around the world.

2000: Vermont Governor Howard Dean signs the United States’s first Bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.

2002: The UN Commission on Human Rights, in its annual review of human rights, censures Cuba’s human rights policies but drops official condemnations of Russia and Iran.

2006: European Union lawmakers announce findings that the CIA conducted more than 1,000 clandestine flights in Europe since 2001, and some of them secretly took away terror suspects to countries where they could face torture.

2007: Thousands of Buddhist monks demonstrate and demand the country’s new constitution enshrine Buddhism as the official national religion.

2008: Police in Amstetten, Austria, arrest Josef Fritzl, freeing his daughter Elisabeth and her six surviving children whom he had fathered while holding her captive in a basement cell for 24 years.

2010: Gunmen shoot and kill a Nigerian journalist at his home the same day two others die while attempting to cover fighting between Christians and Muslims in the nation’s restive central highlands.

2013: Rescuers dig through a collapsed garment factory building in Bangladesh to find more survivors but also more corpses, pushing the death total past 300.

2014: South Korea’s prime minister offers to resign over the Government’s handling of a deadly ferry sinking that left more than 300 people dead or missing.

2017: NASA’s Cassini spacecraft survives an unprecedented trip between Saturn and its rings, sending back amazing pictures to show for it.

2018: Bill Cosby is convicted of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. the first big celebrity trial of the #MeToo era.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:

Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, engineer, sculptor and architect (1452-1519); David Hume, Scottish philosopher-historian-economist (1711-1776); Alfred Krupp, German metallurgist-industrialist (1812-1887); WF Massey, New Zealand politician (1856-1925); I M Pei, Chinese architect (1917-2019); Carol Burnett, US actress (1933- ); Giancarlo Esposito, Danish actor (1958- ); Jet Li, Chinese actor (1963 – ); Marianne Jean-Baptiste, UK actress (1967- ); T-Boz, American rapper of TLC fame (1970- ); Melania Trump, Slovenian former US first lady (1970- ); Pablo Schreiber, Canadian actor (1978- ); Albert Lawrence, Jamaican sprint relay silver medallist at the 1984 Olympics (1961- )

– AP/ Jamaica Observer