Today is the 164th day of 2023. There are 201 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1966: The Supreme Court rules in Miranda v Arizona that criminal suspects have to be informed of their constitutional right to consult with an attorney and to remain silent (Miranda rights).

OTHER EVENTS

323 BC: Alexander the Great dies of a fever at age 33 in Babylon; he leaves no heir and his empire dissolves.

1789: During the French Revolution the National Assembly is convened.

1839: Milos Obrenovic, king of Serbia, abdicates because of opposition to his autocratic methods; he is succeeded by his son Milan.

1886: Bavaria’s insane King Louis II drowns himself; his psychiatrist also drowns trying to save him.

1888: Elderly Prime Minister Charles Floquet of France inflicts a severe wound on populist leader General George Boulanger in a duel in Paris.

1900: The dowager empress of China orders the army to block foreign troops trying to save Europeans under attack in the Boxer Rebellion.

1935: James Braddock claims the title of world heavyweight boxing champion from Max Baer in a 15-round fight in Queens, New York. Becky Sharp, the first movie photographed in “three-strip” Technicolor, opens in New York.

1953: A military coup led by Colombia’s General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla overthrows the unpopular Government of President Laureano Gomez; Rojas Pinilla voluntarily steps down in 1957 when Colombia returns to democratic rule.

1956: The last British troops leave the Suez Canal base, turning the waterway over to Egypt after operating it for 74 years.

1971: The New York Times begins publishing the Pentagon Papers, a top secret study on the USA’s involvement in Vietnam that strengthens domestic opposition to the war.

1977: James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, is recaptured following his escape three days earlier from a Tennessee prison.

1978: The movie musical Grease has its world premiere in New York.

1993: Kim Campbell becomes Canada’s first female prime minister.

1997: Timothy J McVeigh is sentenced to death for bombing a US government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.

1999: The day after moving into Kosovo, NATO peacekeepers kill two Serbs who attack them, and two German journalists and their Macedonian translator are killed by unknown gunmen.

2000: Italy pardons Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981.

2001: One of Mexico’s most wanted alleged drug traffickers, Ramon Alcides Magana, is arrested.

2002: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops meets in Dallas, Texas, to discuss how churches should handle future and past cases of sexual abuse of minors by priests.

2003: The 105-delegate European Convention completes 16 months of work by endorsing a new draft constitution for the European Union.

2005: A US Congress-mandated report on the United Nations calls the world body’s management “ossified” and questions whether UN Secretary General Kofi Annan can overcome inertia, low morale and micromanagement as he pushes sweeping reform.

2006: East African nations try to bolster a largely powerless Government in Somalia, imposing sanctions against warlords and threatening measures against their rival Islamic militiamen.

2007: Hamas launches a battle for control of the entire Gaza Strip, pounding Gaza City’s three main security compounds with mortars, grenades, and assault rifles, and calling on beleaguered Fatah forces to surrender.

2008: Three armed robbers steal two Pablo Picasso prints from a São Paulo art museum.

2009: Opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clash with police in the heart of Iran’s capital, pelting them with rocks and setting fire in the worst unrest in a decade; they accuse the hard-line president of using fraud to steal an election victory from a reformist candidate.

2011: Libyan rebels break out toward Tripoli from the Opposition-held port of Misrata, 140 miles (225 kilometres) to the east, cracking a Government siege as fighters across the country mount a resurgence in their four-month-old revolt against Moammar Gadhafi.Facing off in New Hampshire, Republican White House hopefuls condemn President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy from the opening moments of their first major debate of the 2011-2012 campaign season, and pledge emphatically to repeal his historic, year-old, health-care overhaul.

2012: A military court convicts Tunisia’s dictator, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, in absentia for his role in the bloody suppression of demonstrations in the country’s interior, ordering him to serve life in prison — the harshest sentence up to that time in a slew of cases against the ousted president in exile in Saudi Arabia.

2013: The US Supreme Court unanimously throws out attempts to patent human genes, siding with advocates who say the multi-billion-dollar biotechnology industry should not have exclusive control over genetic information found in the human body. The White House says it has conclusive evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime used chemical weapons against Opposition forces seeking to overthrow the Government. A proposal to build a massive rival to the Panama Canal across the middle of Nicaragua is overwhelmingly backed by lawmakers, capping a lightning-fast approval process that provoked deep scepticism among shipping experts and concern from environmentalists.

2017: A comatose Otto Warmbier, released by North Korea after more than 17 months in captivity, arrives in Cincinnati aboard a medevac flight; the 22-year-old college student, who had suffered severe brain damage, dies six days later. Rolling Stone magazine agrees to pay US$1.65 million to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by a University of Virginia fraternity over a debunked story about a rape on campus.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Richard Barnfield, English poet (1574-1627); William Butler Yeats, Irish Nobel Prize-winning poet-playwright (1865-1939); Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese writer (1888-1935); Osmond Watson, Jamaican painter and sculptor (1934-2005); Siegfried, German magician with Siegfried & Roy (1939-2021); Bobby Freeman, US rock, soul and R&B singer, songwriter and record producer (1940-2017); Ban Ki-moon, South Korean former United Nations secretary general (1944- ); Steve-O, UK entertainer (1974- ); Raz B, American singer, actor, and founding member of R&B boy band B2K (1985- ); Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, US actresses (1986- )

— AP