Today is the 356th day of 2023. There are 9 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2009: American Airlines flight 331 crashes at Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston, Jamaica.

OTHER EVENTS

1636: Archduke Ferdinand, son of the emperor, is elected leader of the Romans.

1793: Napoleon Bonaparte, aged 24, is promoted to brigadier general in recognition of his decisive part in the capture of Toulon from British forces.

1807: US Congress passes the Embargo Act, designed to force peace between Britain and France by cutting off all trade with Europe.

1905: Insurrection of Moscow workers; Revolution in Persia begins.

1941: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Washington for a wartime conference with US President Franklin Roosevelt.

1944: During the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans demand the surrender of American troops at Bastogne, Belgium, and Brigadier General Anthony C McAuliffe reportedly replies, “Nuts!”

1963: Greek liner Laconia catches fire and sinks in North Atlantic; 150 people die.

1984: New York City resident Bernhard Goetz shoots four black youths on a Manhattan subway, claiming they were about to rob him.

1985: Winnie Mandela, defying expulsion order, is arrested by police who drag her from her home in Soweto, South Africa.

1989: Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is toppled in an uprising. He and his wife Elena flee Bucharest, Romania.

1990: Lech Walesa is sworn in as Poland’s first popularly elected president.

1991: Twenty-one US sailors drown when an Israeli ferry taking them from shore capsizes; the body of Lieutenant Colonel William R Higgins, an American hostage murdered by his captors, is found dumped along a highway in Lebanon.

1992: A Libyan Boeing 727 on a domestic flight crashes, killing all 157 people aboard.

1993: Alina Fernandez Revuelta, daughter of Cuban President Fidel Castro, leaves Cuba and is granted political asylum in the United States.

1994: Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi resigns over a bribery scandal after seven months as head of conservative coalition.

1995: As thousands cheer, Yasser Arafat’s wife lights the Christmas tree in Manger Square, ushering in Bethlehem’s first Christmas under Palestinian rule.

1996: In a “Christmas gesture”, Tupac Amaru rebels free 225 hostages from the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima, Peru, but keep 140.

1998: Israel’s Parliament votes overwhelmingly for early elections, signalling the demise of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ailing hard-line government and effectively freezing the already troubled peace process with the Palestinians.

2001: Passengers and crew aboard an American Airlines jet en route to Miami subdue Briton Richard Reid as he tries to detonate explosives hidden in his shoes.

2002: North Korea confirms it removed and disabled monitoring devices that had been placed at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor to ensure compliance with a 1994 international agreement.

2003: The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Boston pays the 542 plaintiffs who agreed to a sexual abuse settlement with the archdiocese. The archdiocese will sell church property to fund the part of the US$85-million settlement not covered by insurers.

2004: Saudi Arabia announces it is withdrawing its ambassador to Libya in what the kingdom called a measured response to reports Tripoli had plotted to assassinate its crown prince.

2005: An Istanbul court separately fines an author and a journalist for insulting the state, the latest convictions in Turkey under a law that European Union officials say limits freedom of expression and must be changed.

2006: The Roman Catholic Church denies a religious funeral for paralysed Italian author Piergiorgio Welby, who died after a doctor disconnected his respirator saying it would treat his public wish to “end his life”. The Vatican calls it an apparent suicide.

2007: Guatemalan congressman-elect Marco Antonio Xicay of the conservative Patriotic Party is shot to death by unidentified attackers outside a popular resort in the country.

2008: Thailand’s revered monarch urges the new government to make peace its priority, breaking months of silence about the political turmoil that shut down Bangkok’s airports and sparked deadly violence in the streets.

2009: Assailants gun down the mother, aunt and siblings of a marine killed in a raid that took out one of Mexico’s most powerful cartel leaders — sending a chilling message to troops battling the drug war: You go after us, we wipe out your families.

2010: Iraq’s Christian leaders call off Christmas celebrations amid new al-Qaeda threats on the tiny community still terrified from a bloody siege on a Baghdad church.

2012: Egypt’s Islamist-backed constitution heads toward approval in a final round of voting, but the deep divisions it has opened up threaten to fuel continued turmoil.

2013: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch who crossed President Vladimir Putin and ended up in jail for a decade, says he plans to devote his life to securing the freedom of the country’s political prisoners.

2016: Ebola vaccine VSV-EBOV is found to be 70 per cent – 100 per cent effective in a study published in The Lancet, becoming the world’s first proven vaccine against Ebola.

2017: UN Security Council votes 15 to 0 for additional sanctions on North Korea, including measures to slash the country’s petrol imports by up to 90 per cent.

2018: Partial shutdown of US federal government begins.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Jean Racine, French dramatist (1639-1699); Thomas Higginson, US abolitionist (1823-1911); Giacomo Puccini, Italian composer (1858-1924); Dame Peggy Ashcroft, English actress (1907-1991); Barbara Billingsley, US actress (1915-2010); Robin Gibb (1949-2012) and twin Maurice Gibb (1949-2003), Anglo-Australian founding members of the Bee Gees; Vanessa Paradis, French singer and model (1972- ); Ralph Fiennes, British actor (1962- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer