This Day in History – December 13
Today is the 347th day of 2023. There are 18 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1989: South African President F W de Klerk meets, for the first time, with imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela at de Klerk’s office in Cape Town.
OTHER EVENTS
2007: Europen Union (EU) leaders sign the Lisbon Treaty — a slimmed-down version of the aborted EU Constitution; the 50-article charter creates the post of EU president and overhauls voting rules. The Mitchell Report is publicly released, listing the names of 89 Major League Baseball players who presumably used anabolic steroids and human growth hormones.
2008: The Indian navy captures 23 pirates who threatened a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Aden, and a German naval helicopter thwarts another attack on a freighter being chased by speedboats off Yemen.
2009: An attacker hurls a statuette at Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, striking the leader in the face at the end of a rally and leaving the stunned 73-year-old media mogul with a broken nose and bloodied mouth.
2010: Ukraine plans to open up the sealed zone around the Chernobyl reactor to visitors who wish to learn more about the nuclear disaster that occurred nearly a quarter of a century before.
2011: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and aerospace pioneer Burt Raton engage in building the world’s biggest plane to help launch cargo and astronauts into space, in the latest of several ventures fuelled by technology tycoons clamouring to write the next chapter in US space history.
2012: A European court issues a landmark ruling that condemns the CIA’s so-called extraordinary renditions programmes and bolsters those who say they were illegally kidnapped and tortured as part of an overzealous fight against terrorism.
2014: Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, criticises UN Security Council for its lack of action over war crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan
2015: Mixed martial artist Irishman Conor McGregor knocks out Brazilian Jose Aldo in 13 seconds to win his first featherweight title in Las Vegas.
2016: United Nations claims 82 civilians have been summarily executed in Aleppo by pro-Government forces.
2017: Democratic Republic of Congo jails for life 11 militiamen, including a local MP, for raping 40 children. Prehistoric bones of a penguin as tall as a human (1.77m) are found on Otago beach, New Zealand, and reported in the journal Nature Communications.
2018: Actress Eliza Dushku reveals she received a US$9.5-million settlement from CBS after sexual harassment by actor Michael Weatherley on the set of Bull.
2020: British Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton finishes third in a season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to claim a record-equalling seventh F1 World Drivers Championship, by 124 points, from teammate Valtteri Bottas; it is Mercedes’ seventh-straight Constructors title.
2021: One in 100 Americans over age 65 have now died of COVID-19 (or 75 per cent of total deaths), according to the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC).
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Archie Moor, American boxer and world light heavyweight boxing champion from 1952 to 1962 (1913-1998 ); George Rhoden, Jamaican 1952 Olympian with two gold medals in the 400m and 4x400m (1926- ); Dick Van Dyke, US actor (1925- ); Taylor Swift, American country music singer-songwriter (1989- )
— AP/Jamaica Observer
