Today is the 341th day of 2023. There are 24 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1982: Convicted murderer Charlie Brooks becomes the first US prisoner executed by injection, at a prison in Huntsville, Texas.

OTHER EVENTS

1787: Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the US Constitution.

1842: New York Philharmonic’s first concert takes place

1909: Chemist Leo H Baekeland receives a US patent for Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic.

1941: Imperial Japan’s navy launches a pre-emptive attack on the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing 2,400 people, about half of them on the battleship USS Arizona. Adolf Hitler issues his Night and Fog Decree, a secret order for the arrest and execution of “persons endangering German security.”

1944: The United States formally announces all six Japanese aircraft carriers involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor were sunk.

1956: Soviet artistic gymnast Larisa Latynina takes her gold medal tally to four at the Melbourne Olympics; she also wins teams and individual all-round titles, with earlier victories in the vault and floor exercise sections.

1962: Forty-two Soviet IL-28 jets, believed to be the entire bomber fleet sent to Cuba, are observed on the decks of Russian ships leaving that island’s ports.

1963: The instant replay machine invented by CBS is first used in a US Army vs Navy football game.

1965: Pope Paul VI and ecumenical patriarch Athenagoras I of Istanbul abolish the mutual excommunication of the 1054 who split Christianity into Catholics and Orthodox.

1964: The US Supreme Court unanimously declares unconstitutional a Florida statute making cohabitation between whites and Negroes a criminal offence.

1972: American astronaut Eugene Andrew Cernan commands the last crewed flight to the moon, effectively ending the Apollo programme.

1975: Shortly after declaring its independence East Timor is invaded and occupied by Indonesia which annexes the region as its 27th province.

1993: Ivory Coast President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Africa’s longest-serving ruler, dies.

1996: After nearly 18 days the Columbia space shuttle and its astronauts return to Earth, ending the longest space shuttle flight ever. Eugene Izzi, mystery writer, hangs himself at age 43.

2001: A consortium of philanthropic foundations announces an initiative to provide treatment for an estimated 2.5 million pregnant women infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.

2002: Iraq turns over to United Nations weapons inspectors a document detailing its weapons of mass destruction programmes and industries with military applications, as required by a November UN Security Council resolution.

2004: Afghan politician Hamid Karzai is sworn in as Afghanistan’s first popularly elected president.

2005: The US Supreme Court rules that the Government may attach a person’s Social Security benefits in order to collect old student loans that have not been repaid.

2007: Swarms of desert locusts invade Kenya’s arid north-east for the first time since 1962; the ravenous pests, which can devastate crops, contributed to a major food crisis in West Africa three years prior.

2012: US President Barack Obama asks Congress for US$60.4 billion in federal aid for New York, New Jersey, and other states hit by Superstorm Sandy; lawmakers pass a US$50.5-billion emergency relief measure in addition to a US$9.7-billion Bill to replenish the National Flood Insurance Program.

2016: Time magazine names US President Donald Trump its Person of the Year.

2017: Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo wins his fifth Ballon d’Or award to equal Lionel Messi’s record — the second-consecutive win for Ronaldo.

2020: American aviator Chuck Yeager, the first person to exceed the speed of sound in flight, dies at age 97.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587); Seigo Takamori, Japanese Restoration hero (1827-1877); Mario Soares, first elected president of Portugal in 60 years (1924-2017); Noam Chomsky, American linguist and political activist (1928- ); Vilma Charlton, Jamaican Olympian in the 1964, 1968 and 1972 Games (1946- )

AP/Jamaica Observer