Today is the 233rd day of 2023. There are 132 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2019: According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, 74,155 fires caused by land clearing are currently burning in the Amazon rainforest, the most ever recorded.

OTHER EVENTS

1673: Britain’s Prince Rupert is defeated off Texel, ending British efforts to land troops in Holland and freeing the Dutch coast from a blockade.

1791: Slaves revolt, beginning the Haitian Revolution.

1831: Former slave Nat Turner leads a violent insurrection in Virginia, United States, and is later executed.

1862: British sailor Billy Barker strikes gold in western Canada’s Cariboo mountains, digging up US$600,000 worth; his wife squanders the fortune and Barker dies penniless.

1939: The Soviet Union and Germany sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, a 10-year non-aggression treaty with a secret addendum to partition Poland; this treaty proved to be the fuse that ignited World War II.

1951: Construction of the first nuclear submarine is ordered; the same power used in atomic bombs during World War II would be harnessed as an alternative energy source.

1963: Buddhists are arrested and martial law is imposed in South Vietnam.

1975: The United States lifts a 12-year ban on exports to Cuba by foreign subsidiaries of US companies, but the embargo on direct trade between Cuba and the United States remains in effect.

1983: Philippine Opposition Leader Benigno Aquino is assassinated as he steps from a plane in Manila after three years of self-imposed exile in United States.

1986: More than 17,000 people die when toxic gas erupts from a volcanic lake in Cameroon.

1989: Colombian authorities seize cars and cattle belonging to drug cartel bosses, in a crackdown on the drug trade.

1990: Some 100,000 people gather in Prague’s Wenceslas Square for the first free commemoration of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

1993: Bosnian Croats give in to UN demands and promise to allow aid to reach tens of thousands of Muslims trapped in Mostar, as heavy fighting rages in the city.

1995: A bomb rips apart a bus during morning rush hour in Jerusalem, killing five people and injuring more than 100.

1999: Farmers dump manure in front of McDonald’s eateries in southern France to protest US sanctions on European Union goods; the sanctions were imposed in response to the EU decision to ban US hormone-treated beef.

2001: Documents released by the National Security Archive, a US-based research organisation, show US officials knew of the Rwandan Government’s involvement in the 1994 genocide. A Norwegian and British rescue team finally reaches the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk which sank in the Barents Sea on August 12; they succeed in opening the rear escape hatch but find that the entire vessel is flooded and all 118 crew members had perished.

2002: Former Enron financial executive Michael J Kopper enters a guilty plea in federal court and agrees to cooperate with investigators; he subsequently tells a federal judge that he had paid large kickbacks to Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow.

2003: French President Jacques Chirac gives a rare televised speech to address a heatwave that caused an estimated 10,000 deaths in Europe over the first three weeks of August. US military officials announce the capture in Iraq of Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, for having ordered the 1988 poison gas attack that killed 5,000 Kurds in Halabja, on the border with Iran.

2004: A series of bombs explode at an Opposition rally in Bangladesh’s capital, killing at least 14 people and injuring hundreds.

2005: The US military orders a criminal investigation into the death of the 21-year-old cousin of Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, who alleged that US Marines killed his unarmed relative in cold blood during a raid in western Iraq.

2006: Iran turns away UN inspectors from an underground site meant to shelter its uranium enrichment programme from attack, diplomats say, while the country’s supreme leader insists Tehran will not give up its contentious nuclear technology.

2007: Saddam Hussein’s cousin, known as Chemical Ali, and 14 others go on trial on charges of crimes against humanity in the brutal suppression of a Shiite uprising that killed tens of thousands after the 1991 Gulf War.

2008: Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell Brown successfully defends her Olympic 200m title at the Beijing Games, beating Allyson Felix of the US. Pirates hijack an Iranian bulk carrier with a crew of 29, a Japanese-operated chemical tanker with a crew of 19, and a German-operated cargo ship with a crew of nine in the Gulf of Aden. The US Food and Drug Administration announces that it has approved the sale of iceberg lettuce and spinach that have been irradiated in order to kill pathogens.

2009: The only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing returns home to Libya to a cheering crowd after his release from a Scottish prison — an outrage to many relatives of the 270 people who perished when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded. Slovakia bans President Laszlo Solyom of Hungary from entering the country; Solyom had planned a visit to attend the unveiling of a statue of a historic Hungarian ruler.

2010: About 150,000 Pakistanis are forced to move to higher ground as floodwaters from a freshly swollen Indus River submerge dozens more towns and villages in the south. Several days of torrential rain cause flooding along the Yalu River on the border between China and North Korea; 127,000 people in China and 5,150 people in North Korea are evacuated and China reports at least four deaths in Liaoning province.

2011: Euphoric Libyan rebels move into the capital Tripoli and move close to the centre with little resistance as Moammar Gadhafi’s defenders melt away; the Opposition’s leaders say Gadhafi’s son and one-time heir apparent, Seif al-Islam, has been arrested.

2014: An Israeli airstrike in Rafah kills Mohammed Abu Shammala, Raed al Atar, and Mohammed Barhoum — three of Hamas’s top commanders.

2015: The first British unmanned drone hit on a UK citizen outside a conflict is carried out on Isis fighter Reyaad Khan in Raqqa, Syria.

2016: Brazil takes their third Olympic men’s indoor volleyball gold medal, at the Rio Games, with a 25–22, 28–26, 26–24 win over Italy.

2018: Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer, pleads guilty to charges including illegal payment — at Trump’s direction — to women with whom Trump had affairs.

2020: Korean pop group BTS releases the single Dynamite which becomes the first video to be watched more than 100 million times in 24 hours on YouTube. American actress Lori Loughlin is sentenced to two months in prison, along with her husband, for her role in a US college admissions bribery scandal.

2021: Flash flooding in Humphreys County, middle Tennessee, kills 22 with dozens missing.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

William Murdock, Scottish inventor (1754-1839); Jules Michelet, French historian (1798-1874); William “Count” Basie, US jazz musician (1904-1984); Britain’s Princess Margaret (1930-2002); Melvin Van Peebles, US film actor-director (1932-2021); Kenny Rogers, US country singer (1938-2020); Usain St Leo Bolt, Jamaican sprint legend and world’s fastest man (1986- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer