This is the 107th day of 2023. There are 258 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1961: Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s forces repel the Bay of Pigs invasion led by recent Cuban exiles and financed by the US Government during the Cold War.

OTHER EVENTS

1492: Christopher Columbus signs a contract with Spanish monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to find the “Indies” (a westward ocean passage to Asia), with the stated goal of converting people to Catholicism in return for 10 per cent of all riches found and the governorship of any lands encountered.

1521: Martin Luther appears before the Holy Roman Emperor at Worms, Germany, and is cross-examined about his thoughts on religious reform; Luther goes into hiding soon after.

1524: Giovanni da Verrazano discovers New York harbour.

1758: Francis Williams, the first US black college graduate, publishes poems.

1808: The Bayonne Decree by Napoleon I of France orders the seizure of US ships.

1895: China opens seven new ports and cedes Formosa (Taiwan), Port Arthur, and the Liao Tung Peninsula to Japan.

1943: US bombers attack Palermo, Sicily, in World War II.

1946: The last French troops leave Syria, which becomes independent.

1956: The Cominform, the international Communist Information Bureau, founded in 1947, is disbanded as part of a Soviet programme of reconciliation with Yugoslavia.

1964: Jerrie Mock of Columbus, Ohio, becomes the first woman to complete a solo aeroplane flight around the world.

1969: Czechoslovak Communist Party Chairman Alexander Dubcek is deposed.

1976: Trailing 12-1, Philadelphia Phillies beat Chicago Cubs 18-16 in 10 innings at Wrigley Field and Mike Schmidt hits four consecutive home runs — the most remarkable fightback at the time.

1982: Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Queen Elizabeth II sign the Proclamation of the Constitution Act and establish the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as part of the country’s new constitution.

1989: Forces of the Afghan Government dislodge rebels from major land routes.

1992: Russian lawmakers refuse to approve an arms control pact, setting up another confrontation with President Boris Yeltsin.

1993: A federal jury in Los Angeles convicts two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King; two other officers are acquitted.

1997: The South Korean Supreme Court upholds verdicts sentencing former President Chun Doo Hwan to life in prison, and his successor Roh Tae Woo to 17 years; the two were accused of abuse of power and corruption.

1998: The United Nations withdraws the team investigating mass killings of Rwandan Hutus in Congo, complaining of a “total lack of cooperation” by the Congolese Government.

2000: Paul Kagame is selected as president of Rwanda, the nation’s first Tutsi leader since independence in 1962 and a former rebel leader whose forces stopped the 1994 genocide.

2001: Jury selection begins in Brussels in the landmark trial of four Rwandans, including two Roman Catholic nuns, facing charges of aiding and abetting the murder of Tutsis during the 1994 genocide.

2003: Anneli Jäätteenmäki is sworn in as prime minister of Finland, which thereby became the second country (after New Zealand) to install a woman as head of both state and government.

2005: Communist rebels in southern Nepal drag at least 10 people from their homes and gun them down for refusing to take up arms with the guerrilla movement; the guerrillas, who claim to be inspired by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong, began fighting in 1996 to overthrow Nepal’s monarchy and establish a communist State.

2006: A Palestinian suicide bomber blows himself up outside a fast food restaurant in a bustling area of Tel Aviv during the Passover holiday, killing nine other people and wounding dozens in the deadliest Palestinian attack in more than a year.

2008: A suicide bomber strikes the funeral of two anti-al-Qaeda Sunni tribesmen in a town north of Baghdad, killing at least 50 people and wounding dozens.

2010: Some 100,000 Poles fill Warsaw’s biggest public square, coming together for a memorial and funeral mass honouring 96 people killed in a plane crash in Russia a week earlier.

2011: The operator of Japan’s crippled nuclear plant lays out a blueprint for stopping radiation leaks and stabilising damaged reactors within the next six to nine months, as a first step toward allowing some of the tens of thousands of evacuees to return to the area.

2012: Norway’s worst mass killer gets the chance to explain his fanatical views to the court and the world, unrepentant and dressed in a business suit. The eighth century St Cuthbert Gospel, Europe’s oldest intact book, is purchased by the British Library for £9 million.

2018: Barbara Bush, American — first lady and wife of George H W Bush, 41st president of the United States, and mother of George W Bush, 43rd president of the United States — dies at age 92.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Henry Vaughan, English poet (1622-1695); Samuel Chase, US jurist-signer of the Declaration of Independence (1741-1811); J Pierpont Morgan (JP Morgan), US financier (1837-1913); Isak Dinesen, Danish writer (1885-1962); Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet statesman (1894-1971); Victoria Adams Beckham, British singer (1974- ); Maurice Wignall, Jamaican former hurdler (1976- )

– AP/ Jamaica Observer