This is the 185th day of 2023. There are 180 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1776: The American Declaration of Independence is approved by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia; the day is now celebrated as Independence Day in the United States.

OTHER EVENTS

1187: The Arab forces of Sultan Saladin destroy the Crusader army at Hattin in northern Palestine, leading to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem.

1779: French forces take Grenada in the West Indies from the British, who retake it four years later.

1826: Two major figures of the American Revolution who became US presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, pass away — 50 years to the day after the adoption of the American Declaration of Independence.

1862: Lewis Carroll, an Oxford University student, narrates a story to a group of friends during a boat trip; the story is later published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

1884: The Statue of Liberty is presented to the United States by the French in Paris.

1910: In what is billed as the “Fight of the Century”, African American boxer Jack Johnson defeats James Jackson Jeffries, considered the “Great White Hope”; Johnson’s victory leads to nationwide celebrations by African Americans that were occasionally met by violence from whites, resulting in more than 20 deaths across the country.

1934: Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard patents the chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb.

1939: American baseball player Lou Gehrig, who had been forced to retire months earlier due to ALS, is honoured with an appreciation day.

1946: The Republic of the Philippines is proclaimed an independent country after 47 years of US rule, with Manuel Roxas as its first president.

1957: V Molotov, D J Shepilov and G M Malenkov are expelled from the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party after trying to remove Nikita Khrushchev.

1976: Israeli commandos raid a hijacked airliner in Entebbe, Uganda, and rescue 103 hostages; four Israelis, seven hijackers and about 20 Ugandan soldiers are killed.

1987: Klaus Barbie, a local Gestapo chief in World War II, is convicted of crimes against humanity in Lyon, France, and is sentenced to life imprisonment.

1990: The Kremlin lifts a 10-week ban on rail transport of foodstuffs into Lithuania, ending an effort to quell the republic’s independence movement.

1994: Tutsi rebels seize most of Kigali and another key city in Rwanda, ending the worst of the genocide by Hutu militants in those areas.

1999: Pope John Paul II blesses a new church that Roman citizens had promised to build 55 years earlier. (On June 4, 1944 Allied troops were poised to enter Rome, citizens prayed for deliverance, and an hour later German troops withdrew from the city.

2001: Congolese President Joseph Kabila and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni meet for first face-to-face peace talks in Tanzania as part of an effort to end the three-year war in Congo.

2003: Three suspected Muslim militants attack a Shiite mosque in Quetta, Pakistan, opening fire during Friday prayers and killing 53 people.

2004: Indonesia’s young democracy holds its first direct presidential election, six years after President Suharto’s 32-year dictatorship was overthrown.

2007: British Broadcasting Corporation reporter Alan Johnston is released after nearly four months in captivity in the Gaza Strip, where he was held by the shadowy, little-known militant group, Army of Islam.

2009: North Korea launches seven ballistic missiles into waters off its east coast, in a show of military firepower that defies UN resolutions and draws global expressions of condemnation and concern.

2010: Interim President Bronislaw Komorowski apparently holds off a last-minute surge from the identical twin brother of the late Polish president who died in an April plane crash that shocked the country and forced an early election.

2012: Pakistan’s decision to end a seven-month blockade of NATO troops supplies is a rare bright spot in relations with the US, but disagreements over issues like American drone strikes and Islamabad’s support for Taliban militants still hamper a relationship vital to stability in neighbouring Afghanistan.

2013: France says it confirmed the nerve gas sarin was used “multiple times in a localised way” in Syria, including at least once by the regime.

2017: North Korea tests its first successful intercontinental ballistic missile in the Sea of Japan.

2018: Hong Kong’s top court rules same-sex couples are entitled to equal visa rights, in a landmark case.

2019: Egypt claims the 3,000-year-old Tutankhamun bust is stolen as it sells for US$6 million during a Christies auction.

2020: Record rain on the island of Kyushu in Japan causes flooding, killing a least 37 people and resulting in more than 200,000 being evacuated.

2021: Researchers reveal there are 14 living descendants of Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Nathaniel Hawthorne, US author of The Scarlet Letter (1804-1882); Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian soldier-statesman (1807-1882); Norman Washington Manley, Jamaican national hero, social activist, politician, and first and only premier (1893-1969); Louis Armstrong, US jazz musician (1900-1971); John Waite, English musician (1955- ); Malia Obama, daughter of US President Barack Obama (1998- )

– AP/Jamaica Observer