Today is the 237th day of 2023. There are 128 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2000: The Zimbabwe Government names another 509 white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks, bringing to 1,542 the number claimed under a land seizure programme.

OTHER EVENTS

1580: Spain invades Portugal and, in a matter of weeks, conquers it and keeps it for more than 80 years.

1875: Matthew Webb, British professional swimmer, becomes the first person to swim across the English Channel, travelling from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 22 hours.

1941: British and Soviet troops invade Iran following the shah’s refusal to reduce the number of its resident Germans.

1944: During World War II Paris is liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.

1950: US President Harry Truman orders the army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike.

1958: President Dwight D Eisenhower signs a measure providing pensions for former US presidents and their widows.

1961: President Janio Quadros of Brazil, citing unidentified “terrible forces”, resigns unexpectedly after seven months in office.

1965: A massive avalanche roars down from a glacier in the Swiss Alps, burying 108 people at a hydroelectric construction project.

1973: The UN Security Council condemns Israel for its “premeditated air attack” on Lebanese villages.

1981: US spacecraft Voyager 2 comes within 105,000 kilometres (63,000 miles) of Saturn’s cloud cover, sending back pictures and data on the ringed planet; it makes its closest approach to Neptune, its final planetary target, in 1989.

1993: United Nations trucks piled high with food and medicine enter the embattled Bosnian city of Mostar. Terrified Muslims prevent 53 Spanish peacekeepers from leaving the city for six days.

1996: Israel moves trailers into Jewish West Bank settlements, the first step by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toward expanding settlements; Israel pushes forward in 2013, 17 years later to the day, with plans to construct 1,500 apartments in east Jerusalem.

1997: Egon Krenz, the East German communist leader who threw open the Berlin Wall eight years earlier, is convicted of manslaughter for the shooting deaths of citizens who tried to flee to the West during the Cold War; he is sentenced to 6 1/2 years’ imprisonment.

1998: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill debut album by Lauryn Hill is released; it wins five Grammy Awards including Album of the Year and Billboard Album of the Year for 1998.

2003: Bombs planted in taxis, in two separate locations in Bombay, explode, killing 50 people and wounding more than 150.

2008: Israel frees nearly 200 jailed Palestinians in a goodwill gesture, hours before US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice begins her peace mission to the region.

2009: After weeks of denials, two Pakistani Taliban commanders acknowledge that the group’s top leader, Baitullah Mehsud, is dead — claiming he died 18 days after a US missile strike and disputing reports that the al-Qaeda-linked movement he left behind is falling apart.

2012: Neil Armstrong, 82, the first man to set foot on the moon in July 1969, dies in Cincinnati, Ohio. Alpha and long-shot Golden Ticket finish in a historic dead heat in the US$1-million Travers Stakes at Saratoga Race Course.

2016: Hillary Clinton says Donald Trump has unleashed the “radical fringe” within the Republican Party, claiming the billionaire businessman’s campaign is one that will “make America hate again”.

2017: Indian spiritual leader Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh is convicted of raping two of his followers in Panchkula.

2018: Afghan Islamic State leader Abu Saad Erhabi and 10 others are killed in an air strike in the province of Nangarhar, Afghanistan.

2019: NASA investigates possibly the first crime in space over astronaut Anne McClain illegally accessing a bank a/c from space.

2020: WHO announces that Africa has eradicated polio (defined as four years since last case).

2022: California votes to ban the sale of all new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Ivan IV “The Terrible”, first czar of Russia (1530-1584); Althea Gibson, American tennis player and first African American, of either gender, to play professional tennis (1927 – 2003); Sean Connery, British actor (1930-2020); Wellesley K Clayton, Jamaican former long jumper (1938- ); Elvis Costello, British singer (1954- ); Claudia Schiffer, German model (1970- )

— AP/ Jamaica Observer