This is the 300th day of 2023. There are 65 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1960: George William Gordon House (Gordon House), the Jamaican Parliament building, is named in honour of George William Gordon who was conferred with the Order of National Hero in 1969.

OTHER EVENTS

939: Athelstan, the first king to rule over all of England, dies.

1492: Christopher Columbus sails to Cuba and claims the island for Spain.

1807: Spain and France agree to conquer Portugal.

1871: Britain annexes the diamond fields of Kimberly, South Africa.

1922: A Southern Rhodesia referendum rejects joining the Union of South Africa.

1938: US company DuPont announces its new synthetic polyamide fiber will be called nylon.

1945: President Harry S Truman says the US will not recognise a government forced upon any nation by a foreign power.

1977: US President Jimmy Carter rules out any US embargo on trade with, or any ban on US investments in South Africa as protest against its racial policies.

1979: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, an island country lying within the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Caribbean Sea, achieves its independence.

1986: The British Government deregulates financial markets in a “Big Bang”, enhancing London’s status as a financial capital while increasing income inequality.

1989: Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announces an end to the ceasefire with US-backed anti-Sandinista rebels.

1990: Roman Catholic bishops conclude a month-long synod in Rome, reaffirming the policy of celibacy for priests; the possibility of easing the church’s opposition to married priests came up as a way to help overcome a shortage of clerics in some dioceses.

1992: Israeli jets bomb southern Lebanon, avenging the deaths of six Israelis, but the Israeli Government resists calls to withdraw from Middle East peace talks.

1997: The Dow Jones industrial average tumbles 554.26 points, forcing the stock market to shut down for the first time since the 1981 assassination attempt on US President Ronald Reagan.

2000: At a concert near Tel Aviv the music of German composer Richard Wagner, which many associate with the Nazi regime, is played for the first time in public in Israel.

2002: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wins Brazil’s presidential run-off election, becoming the nation’s first working-class president.

2009: Seven former Guantanamo Bay detainees ask the High Court in London to reject a Government request to use secret sessions to hear allegations that Britain was complicit in their torture overseas.

2010: Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden threatens in a new audio tape to kill French citizens so as to avenge their country’s support for the US-led war in Afghanistan and a new law that will ban face-covering Muslim veils.

2017: Catalonia’s Parliament votes to declare the region independent from Spain, resulting in the central government dismissing that legislative body and calling for new elections in which the majority of seats were claimed by the pro-independence movement.

2018: Australian seven-year-old mare Winx wins an unprecedented fourth-consecutive Cox Plate at Moonee Valley in Melbourne — her record 29th-straight win and her 22nd Group 1 racing success. EPL club Leicester City’s billionaire Thai owner, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha dies in a helicopter crash in the car park outside the club’s King Power Stadium.

2019: California Governor Gavin Newson declares a state of emergency due to multiple fires across the state, including Sonomoa County’s Kincade Fire which burned over 30,000 acres.

2020: Leader of NXIVM cult Keith Raniere is sentenced to 120 years in prison for sex trafficking, racketeering, fraud and other crimes.

2021: More than one million people in southern Madagascar are on the brink of famine according to Amnesty International, which urges the world to provide relief.

2022: Elon Musk takes ownership and control of Twitter, and immediately fires four executives.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Erasmus, Dutch humanist (1469-1536); James Cook, British explorer (1728-1779); Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US president (1858-1619); Oliver Tambo, South African Anti-Apartheid Politician and Revolutionary (1917-1993); John Gotti, American gangster and boss of Gambino crime family (1940-2002); Marla Maples, American actress and model (1963- )

– AP/ Jamaica Observer