Today is the 207th of 2023. There are 158 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2006: In a dramatic turnaround from her first murder trial, Andrea Yates is found not guilty by reason of insanity by a Houston jury in the bathtub drownings of her five children; she is committed to a state mental hospital. (Yates had initially been found guilty of murder but had her conviction overturned.)

OTHER EVENTS

1524: At age 12 James V is declared fit to govern by the Scottish Parliament.

1533: Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor of Peru, is ordered executed by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro and chooses to be strangled with a garrote. (Pizarro was later assassinated — one month short of the seven-year anniversary Atahualpa’s execution — by a faction of disgruntled Spanish colonists.)

1684: Italian Elena Cornaro Piscopia — philosopher, mathematician, esteemed musician, and the first woman to receive an academic degree and a PhD degree from a university — dies of tuberculosis.

1821: Turkey and Russia sever relations after Turkey refuses to protect Christian subjects.

1847: Liberia becomes the first African colony to declare its independence.

1891: France annexes the South Sea island of Tahiti.

1908: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is established in the United States.

1926: The Philippines legislature calls for a referendum on independence but it is vetoed by US governor general.

1945: Britain, United States and China demand Japan’s unconditional surrender as terms for peace in World War II.

1948: US President Harry S Truman signs Executive Order 9981 which abolishes racial segregation in the US military.

1952: Egypt’s King Farouk abdicates in favour of his infant son after a military coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser.

1953: Fidel Castro leads an attack on army barracks in Santiago, Cuba, in the hope of sparking a popular uprising; most of the 160 revolutionaries are killed and Castro is captured but later receives an amnesty.

1956: Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser seizes control of the Suez Canal and nationalises it, sparking a crisis that later results in French, British, and Israeli forces briefly occupying parts of Egypt.

1984: Liberian President Samuel K Doe lifts a four-year ban on political activity as part of a plan to restore constitutional rule, with general elections at the end of following year.

1990: The Americans with Disabilities Act is signed into law by President George H W Bush, providing civil rights protections to individuals with physical and mental disabilities and guaranteeing them equal opportunity in public accommodations, employment, transportation, state and local government services, and telecommunications.

1991: Communist leaders overwhelmingly approve Mikhail Gorbachev’s new party platform, abandoning decades of Marxist dogma.

1992: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ends a three-week stand-off and allows UN inspectors to search the Agriculture Ministry in Baghdad for chemical weapons.

1997: K R Narayanan takes the oath of India’s presidency, the first member of the class once known as “untouchables” to do so.

2000: The European Union proposes a ban on the import of “conflict diamonds” from Sierra Leone; the proposal matches a similar resolution passed by the UN Security Council.

2002: A court in Jakarta, Indonesia, convicts Hutomo Mandala Putra — son of former President Suharto — of hiring the assassins who murdered the Supreme Court justice who convicted Putra of fraud.

2004: The European Union joins the US in pushing for “imminent” UN sanctions against Sudan if it does not end the conflict in its western Darfur region.

2006: Jamaican cultural icon Louise Bennett-Coverley, popualrly referred to as Miss Lou, dies. Israeli aircraft and artillery fire, in its offensive, at Palestinian militants in Gaza and kill 18 Palestinians, including at least three little girls.

2010: A UN-backed tribunal sentences the Khmer Rouge’s chief jailer to 35 years for overseeing the deaths of up to 16,000 people — the first verdict involving a senior member of the “killing fields” regime that devastated a generation of Cambodians.

2013: Ariel Castro, the man who imprisoned three women in his Cleveland home, subjecting them to a decade of rapes and beatings, pleads guilty to 937 counts in a deal to avoid the death penalty. (Castro later committed suicide in prison.)

2016: Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman to be nominated for president by a major political party at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

2017: US President Donald Trump announces on Twitter that he will not “accept or allow” transgender people to serve in the US military. 2019: Australian cricket Captain Meg Lanning records a T20 International world record individual score of 133 off 63 balls in 93-run win against England at Chelmsford.

2020: The body of civil rights activist John Lewis crosses Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma for the last time (after being beaten there 55 years prior), with a military honour guard as part of a remembrance ceremony.

2021: A ship carrying migrants wrecks off the coast of Al-Khums, Libya, killing at least 57 and taking the death toll in the central Mediterranean to 987 for 2021. The Tunisian Government falls into crisis after President Kais Saied sacks Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and suspends parliament with the help of the army due to its handling of COVID-19.

2022: Two new studies published in the journal Science both confirm COVID-19 mostly likely began in the Hunan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

George Bernard Shaw, Irish writer (1856-1950); Carl Jung, Swiss psychologist (1875-1961); Antonio Machado, Spanish writer (1875-1939); George Grosz, German painter (1893-1959); Aldous Huxley, British author (1894-1963); Mick Jagger, British pop singer (1943- ); Kevin Spacey, US actor (1959- ); Sandra Bullock, US actress (1964- )

– AP/ Jamaica Observer