This is the 101st day of 2023. There are 264 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2002: Wouter Basson, a scientist who headed South Africa’s covert chemical- and germ-warfare operations during the apartheid era, is acquitted on 46 charges of murder, conspiracy, drug possession, and fraud.

OTHER EVENTS

1241: In the Battle of Mohi the Mongols, led by Batu and Subedei, defeat Hungarian King Béla IV during their invasion of Hungary; 30,000 Hungarians are slain.

1612: The last public burning at the stake in England is of Edward Wrightman for the charge of heresy in Lichfield.

1689 King William III and Queen Mary II are crowned as joint rulers of England, Scotland and Ireland.

1814: Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates unconditionally as emperor of France and is banished to Elba by the Treaty of Fontainebleau.

1815: The eruption of Mount Tambora, a volcano on the island of Sumbawa in what is now Indonesia, kills about 10,000 people.

1843: Britain separates the Gambia from Sierra Leone as a crown colony.

1848: Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria confirms the March Laws, which forms the foundation of the modern State of Hungary.

1853: Steamboat ferry Jenny Lind’s boiler explosion kills at least 31 passengers in San Francisco Bay, California.

1894: Uganda is declared a British protectorate.

1895: Cuban patriot José Julián Martí lands in Cuba at the head of an invading force whose goal is to win independence from Spain.

1896: Hungarian swimmer Alfréd Hajós beats Otto Herschmann of Austria by 0.6s to win the inaugural Olympic 100m freestyle final in 1:22.2 at the Athens Games. Irish tennis player John Boland, representing Great Britain, wins both the men’s singles and doubles finals at the Athens Olympics.

1899: The Philippines are transferred from Spain to the United States.

1909: Tel Aviv is established by Jewish settlers (named in 1910).

1911: Actress Mae West, at 17, weds fellow vaudevillian Frank Wallace, 21, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

1913: Postmaster General Albert S Burleson, during a meeting of President Woodrow Wilson’s Cabinet, proposes gradually segregating whites and blacks who worked for the Railway Mail Service, a policy which goes into effect and spreads to other agencies.

1919: New Zealanders vote in a referendum against prohibition (the ban on the sale or promotion of alcohol).

1921: Iowa becomes the first US state to impose a cigarette tax.

1945: During World War II American soldiers liberate the notorious Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald in Germany; Elie Wiesel, who goes on to become a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is among the thousands freed.

1955: Chartered Air India plane the Kashmir Princess is bombed and crashes into the South China Sea in a failed assassination attempt on Zhou Enlai by a Kuomintang secret agent.

1961: The trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem; eight months later it ends with the only death sentence ever imposed by an Israeli court.

1966: Frank Sinatra records Strangers in the Night single for his album of the same name; it later reaches number one on the Billboard charts.

1967: Jamaica’s second prime minister, Sir Donald Sangster, dies; Hugh Lawson Shearer is sworn in as Jamaica’s third prime minister.

1968: US President Lyndon B Johnson signs the 1968 Civil Rights Act.

1970: Apollo 13 is launched from Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral), Florida. The mission is aborted after an oxygen tank explodes en route to the Moon and cripples the spacecraft; the astronauts manage to return safely.

1979: The Tanzanian army captures Kampala, capital of Uganda, forcing Ugandan dictator Idi Amin — whose brutality earned him the nickname Butcher of Uganda — to flee into exile, deposing him as president of Uganda as rebels and exiles backed by Tanzanian forces seize control.

1980: The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issues regulations specifically prohibiting sexual harassment of workers by supervisors.

1981: US President Ronald Reagan returns to the White House from the hospital, 12 days after being wounded in an assassination attempt.

1985: Dictator of Albania Enver Hoxha dies at age 76.

1986: Washington state employees win a lawsuit requiring the state to pay women as much as men for comparable work.

1991: The UN Security Council announces a formal end to the Gulf War, accepting Iraq’s pledge that it will pay for war damages and scrap its weapons of mass destruction.

1993: Despite appeals for calm, two whites are burned to death in South Africa by a black crowd, a day after the assassination of anti-apartheid black leader Chris Hani.

1994: US President Bill Clinton orders trade sanctions against Taiwan for trafficking in endangered tiger and rhinoceros parts.

1998: The Cambodian army takes Anlong Veng, the last major Khmer Rouge base, sending the rebels fleeing into the jungle.

1999: India tests an improved medium-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead more than 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles); Pakistan tests a similar missile two days later.

2001: Israeli tanks and bulldozers rumble into the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Palestinian-controlled territory in the Gaza Strip, damaging 30 homes and triggering fighting that kills two Palestinians and wounds more than two dozen.

2002: Police fight pitched battles with protesters after more than 150,000 people march on the presidential palace demanding President Hugo Chavez’s ouster as a general strike grips the country; nineteen people are killed and 350 injured.

2003: Hong Kong bans quarantined residents from leaving the city as the deadly SARS virus turns up in Indonesia and the Philippines, in both cases among foreigners recently returned from Hong Kong.

2007: Powerful bombs rip through the Algerian prime minister’s office and a police station, killing 23 people and wounding 160 in an attack orchestrated by al-Qaeda’s wing in North Africa; the premier escapes unharmed.

2012: George Zimmerman, the Florida neighbourhood watch volunteer who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, is arrested and charged with second-degree murder. A California prison panel denies parole to mass murderer Charles Manson in his 12th and probably final bid for freedom.

2013: Fossilised dinosaur eggs with embryos are discovered in China. A US intelligence report concludes that North Korea advanced its nuclear know-how to the point that it could arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead.

2015: Barack Obama and Raúl Castro meet in Panama, the first meeting of US and Cuban heads of state since the Cuban Revolution.

2019: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is overthrown and arrested by the army in Khartoum, after 29 years in power.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

John I, King of Portugal (1385-1433); George Canning, English statesman (1770-1827); Manuel Quintana, Spanish poet (1772-1857); John Davidson, Scottish poet-playwright (1857-1909); Gustav Vigeland, Norwegian sculptor (1869-1943); Kasturba Gandhi, Indian political activist (1869-1944); Dean Acheson, US secretary of state, adviser to four presidents, and principal creator of US foreign policy in the Cold War period following World War II (1893-1971); Joss Stone, British singer (1987- ); Ethel Kennedy, American human-rights campaigner and widow of Senator Robert F Kennedy (1928- )

– AP/ Jamaican Observer