This is the 363rd day of 2023. There are 2 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2001: A series of fireworks explosions spark a massive fire in downtown Lima, Peru, killing 291 people; the blaze, fuelled by dozens of sidewalk vendors selling illegal fireworks, quickly spreads throughout the crowded commercial district.

2007: Government officials in China announce that the first election in which Hong Kong voters may directly elect their leader will not take place until at least 2017; previously it had been thought that the elections in 2012 might be held democratically.

OTHER EVENTS

1170: English Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket is assassinated before the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral by four knights.

1835: The Treaty of New Echota between the US Government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction is signed to cede to the United States all lands of the Cherokee, east of the Mississippi River.

1890: US troops massacre 200 Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

1957: Singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme are married in Las Vegas; the marriage lasts 56 years until Gorme’s death in 2013.

1967: The Hyundai Motor Company is founded in Seoul, South Korea.

1973: Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos ends his elected term and begins to rule on the basis of a takeover decree.

1975: A bomb explodes in New York’s LaGuardia Airport, killing 11 people; it has never been determined who was responsible.

1989: The Czechoslovak Parliament elects dissident playwright Vaclav Havel as its president, without opposition.

1992: David and Sharon Schoo are arrested at O’Hare International Airport, USA — upon their return from a Mexican vacation — for leaving their four- and nine-year-old daughters at home alone; the children were put up for adoption. Premier Milan Panic, the Serb-born American who pushed for peace in fragmented Yugoslavia, is ousted by Parliament in a vote that strengthens Serbia’s hard-line president, Slobodan Milosevic.

1993: A dozen buses cross rural Bosnian battlegrounds and take about 900 Sarajevans to Croatia as refugees.

2004: Paramedics spray Indian beaches with bleach and vaccinate tsunami survivors as Indonesian authorities bulldoze mass graves for thousands of corpses lining the streets and lawns of Banda Aceh.

2009: North Korea acknowledges it detained an American for illegally entering the reclusive country, apparently after a missionary sneaked across the border.

2010: Police in Denmark and Sweden arrest five men they say planned to shoot as many people as possible in a Copenhagen building housing the newsroom of a paper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

2015: Guinea is declared free of ebola by the World Health Organization, some two years after the deadly disease was reported in the country and sparked an outbreak in western Africa.

2016: Barack Obama retaliates against Russia for hacking American computer systems and trying to influence the 2016 presidential election US President by ejecting 35 Russian spies and imposing sanctions.

2022: Football (soccer) legend Pelé, one of the sport’s greatest players, dies at age 82. Social medial personality Andrew Tate is arrested in Romania on charges of sex trafficking and rape, following an exchange with Greta Thunberg over Twitter.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Pablo Casals, Spanish cellist (1876-1973); Alvin Marriott, Jamaican renowned sculptor (1902-1992); Viveca Lindfors, Swedish-born actress (1920-1995); Gelsey Kirkland, US ballet dancer (1952-); Ted Danson, US actor (1947-); Jude Law, British actor (1972-)

AP/Jamaica Observer