This is the 361st day of 2023. There are 4 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1986: Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Jamaican multiple Olympic and World champion, is born this day.

OTHER EVENTS

1831: Naturalist Charles Darwin sets out on a voyage to the Pacific aboard the HMS Beagle; his discoveries during the voyage help form the basis of his theories on evolution.

1845: Ether is first used in childbirth in the USA in Jefferson, Georgia.

1927: Joseph Stalin’s faction wins at the All-Union Congress in Soviet Union.

1937: Mae West performs the Adam & Eve skit and gets banned from NBC radio.

1939: Between 20,000 and 40,000 die in a magnitude-8 earthquake in Erzincam, Turkey.

1945: The International Monetary Fund is formally established by 29 member countries based on the ideas of Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes.

1948: Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty of the Roman Catholic Church is arrested by the Hungarian Government on charges of treason, espionage and black market activities.

1949: The Netherlands’ Queen Juliana grants Indonesia sovereignty after more than three centuries of Dutch rule.

1964: The Congo Government charges that officers from Algeria and the United Arab Republic are leading Congolese rebels on Congo’s north-eastern border.

1970: After 2,844 performances the musical Hello, Dolly! closes on Broadway.

1972: Australia halts military aid to South Vietnam, ending its involvement in the Vietnam War.

1979: After invading Afghanistan two days earlier Soviet forces overthrow and execute President Hafizullah Amin in Kabul and replace him with Babrak Karmal.

1981: Edmonton Oiler Wayne Gretzky becomes the fastest NHL player to get 100 points in a season.

1985: American naturalist Dian Fossey, who studied gorillas in the wild, is found hacked to death at a research station in Rwanda.

1989: US soldiers blast rock music and news bulletins about Panama at the Vatican embassy in Panama City to try driving General Manuel Noriega from refuge there.

1994: Suspected Muslim militants in Algiers kill four Catholic priests.

1996: Some 60,000 Opposition supporters defy riot police to rally in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, buoyed by international mediators who upheld their victory over President Slobodan Milosevic in local elections.

1997: Billy Wright, one of the most feared Protestant guerrilla leaders in Northern Ireland, is shot and killed in prison by inmates belonging to an Irish Republican Army splinter group.

1999: Alfonso Portillo of the right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front wins the country’s first peacetime presidential election in nearly 40 years.

2000: Animal rights activists toss eggs and jeer as hunters and hounds pursue foxes across a frigid British countryside in traditional post-Christmas hunts.

2002: Three unidentified men in a military truck penetrate the pro-Russian Government’s headquarters in Grozny, capital of Chechnya, and detonate more than a ton of explosives, killing 63 people and injuring 178.

2006: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules state lawmakers cannot be compelled to vote on a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage.

2007: Pakistan Opposition Leader Benazir Bhutto is killed by an attacker who then blows himself up; at least 20 others are also killed.

2008: International aid agencies warn that Zimbabwe’s humanitarian crisis is deepening, with a sharp rise in acute child malnutrition and a worsening cholera epidemic.

2009: A Nigerian man’s claim that his attempt to blow up a US plane originated with al-Qaeda’s network inside Yemen deepens concerns that instability in the Middle Eastern country is providing the terror group with a base to train and recruit militants for operations against the West and the US.

2011: Surprised airport workers in Argentina find hundreds of wriggling poisonous snakes and endangered reptiles inside the baggage of a Czech man who was about to board a flight to Spain.

2017: Jamaican Raheem Sterling scores to give Manchester City a 1-0 win over Newcastle United at St James’ Park.

2022: Luka Dončić becomes the first player to register a 60-21-10 triple-double in NBA history as the Dallas Mavericks beat the NY Knicks,126-121.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Johannes Kepler, German astronomer (1571-1630); Louis Pasteur, French scientist (1822-1895); Marlene Dietrich, German actress (1901-1992); T S Monk (Thelonious Sphere Monk III), US jazz drummer-vocalist (1949- ); Timothée Chalamet, French American actor (1995- )

– AP/Jamaica Observer