Today is the 173rd day of 2026. There are 192 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2010: South Africa becomes the first host nation not to advance in 80 years of World Cup play.

OTHER EVENTS

1611: English explorer Henry Hudson, his son, and several other people are set adrift in present-day Hudson Bay by mutineers aboard the Discovery; their fate remains unknown.

1633: Accused of heresy by the Inquisition, Galileo is forced to recant his support of the Copernican system which holds that the sun is the centre of the solar system.

1870: The United States Department of Justice is created.

1937: Joe Louis begins his reign as world heavyweight boxing champion by knocking Jim Braddock out in the eighth round of their fight in Chicago, USA.

1955: Animated musical Lady and the Tramp, one of Walt Disney’s most endearing movies, is released in US cinemas.

1963: “Little” Stevie Wonder, age 13, releases his first single Fingertips – Pt 2; it is the first live, non-studio recording to go number one on Billboard’s Hot 100.

1965: Movie producer of Gone With The Wind
, David O Selznick dies in Los Angeles, USA, at age 63.

1977: John N Mitchell becomes the first former US attorney general to go to prison as he begins serving a sentence for his role in the Watergate cover-up; he is released 19 months later.

1987: A bomb blast in a Johannesburg, South Africa, video game arcade kills an unborn baby and injures 10 people.

1994: The World Wildlife Federation announces the discovery of the Vu Quang ox, a deer-like animal in Vietnam and only the seventh-largest land mammal discovered since 1900.

1995: Facing a major political crisis, Russian President Boris Yeltsin threatens to disband Parliament if they vote to remove his Cabinet; the Parliament later backs down.

2004: The US announces it will transfer legal custody of Saddam Hussein and other top prisoners to Iraqi authorities as soon as Iraqi courts issue the necessary warrants.

2005: Federal drug agents launch a wide-ranging crackdown on medical marijuana providers in northern California, USA.

2006: The Devil Wears Prada, starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci, premieres at the LA Film Festival in Los Angeles, California, USA.

2007: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and US-led coalition forces kill about 60 insurgents along the Afghan-Pakistan border, in what is described as the largest insurgent formation crossing the border region in six months.

2008: American comedian George Carlin — whose Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television routine leads to a US Supreme Court ruling that gives the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the right to determine when to censor radio and TV broadcasts — dies at age 71.

2010: After a month-long manhunt, accused Jamaican strongman Christopher “Dudus” Coke is apprehended by police on the Nelson Mandela Highway in St Catherine, Jamaica; Coke, who was being driven by Reverend Al Miller, was reportedly on his way to the US Embassy in Kingston to hand himself over to American authorities, who had requested his extradition.

2017: California officials deny parole for convicted killer Patricia Krenwinkel, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson, for the 1969 slayings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four other people.

2020: Joel Schumacher, American film director of The Lost Boys and Batman Forever, dies at 80.

2021: UNESCO says Australia’s Great Barrier Reef should be put on the list of World Heritage Sites that are “in danger”.

2022: The tooth of murdered Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba arrives for a tour of Democratic Republic of Congo before being laid to rest in Kinshasa; Lumumba’s body was dissolved in acid.

An orangutan in Sumatra is the first wild animal ever scientifically observed using plants as medicine, healing a cheek wound with a poultice.

2023: A debris field is found for a missing Titan submersible, with all five on-board believed dead after it suffered a “catastrophic implosion” near the wreck of British luxury passenger liner RMS Titanic.

2024: Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten shows his last collection in Paris before retiring, after 38 years in the industry.

2025: The US joins an Israeli offensive against Iranian nuclear facilities, bombing three sites — including more than a dozen massive “bunker buster” bombs on subterranean Fordow and Natanz facilities — while Tomahawk missiles strike Isfahan; Operation Midnight Hammer involves 125 aircraft- and submarine-launched missiles.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Julian Huxley, English biologist and philosopher who greatly influenced modern development of embryology (1887-1975); Leleith Hodges, Jamaican Olympian (1953- ); Erin Brockovich, environmental activist (1960- )

– AP/ Britannica.com/OnThisDay.com/Jamaica Observer