This is the 220th day of 2023. There are 145 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1962: Celebrations for Jamaica’s first Independence Day continue with a 7:00 pm roadside concert at the corner of Olympic Way and Cling Cling Avenue in St Andrew. It features, among others, Louise Bennett, Ranny Williams, Charles Hyatt, The Frats Quintet, Ivy Baxter and Eddie Thomas, and Mapletoft Poulle and his Orchestra.

Earlier in the day, Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon travelled by royal train from Spanish Town, St Catherine, to Montego Bay, St James. They stopped in Denbigh, Clarendon; Williamsfield, Manchester; Maggotty, St Elizabeth; and Montpelier, Westmoreland, for informal greetings.

OTHER EVENTS

1588: The English fleet batters and scatters the Spanish Armada off France in the first major naval gun battle in history.

1786: The US Congress unanimously chooses the dollar as the monetary unit for the United States of America.

1815: France’s Napoleon Bonaparte sails for St Helena to spend the remainder of his life in exile.

1844: Brigham Young is chosen as head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints following the death of Joseph Smith.

1876: American inventor Thomas A Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph (duplicating machine that produced copies from a stencil and has since been superseded by the photocopier).

1925: The first national march of the Ku Klux Klan (between 25,000 and 40,000 marchers) takes place in Washington, DC.

1939: The seventh Venice Film Festival opens with a United States boycott due to Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italian regime.

1940: Germany begins heavy bombing of Britain in World War II.

1945: The USSR establishes a communist Government in North Korea.

1950: Florence Chadwick swims the English Channel from Cap Gris Nez to Dover in 13 hours and 28 minutes, a new speed record for women.

1953: United States and South Korea sign a mutual defence treaty.

1960: The United Nations demands the evacuation of Belgian troops from Congo.

1963: Armed robbers steal £2.6 million from the Glasgow-London Royal Mail Train near Bridego Bridge, north of London, in the “Great Train Robbery”.

1973: US Vice-President Spiro T Agnew brands reports that he took kickbacks when he was the governor of Maryland as “damn lies” and vows not to resign, then retracts and resigns on October 10.

1974: US President Richard M Nixon announces his resignation on this day in 1974 and was succeeded by Gerald Ford the following day.

1980: A Turkish military court sentences 22 people to death on charges stemming from the December 1978 rioting in Kahramanmaras that killed more than 100 people; the court acquits 411 others.

1983: In its sixth coup since 1954, the Guatemalan military overthrows President Efrain Rios Montt and installs Defence Minister Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores as chief of state.

1988: UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar announces a ceasefire between Iran and Iraq after eight years of war.

1990: Iraq formally annexes Kuwait and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher orders British air and naval forces to the Gulf at the request of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd.

1991: Lebanese kidnappers free British TV producer John McCarthy after holding him hostage for five years.

1992: President Denis Sassou-Nguesso loses his seat in Republic of Congo’s first presidential election since 1963.

1993: Four American soldiers are killed by a remote-controlled bomb in Somalia; the US blames warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid.

1994: Israel and Jordan open first road linking the two nations.

1995: The “AIDS gang”, a group of bank robbers who cannot be jailed under Italian law because they have AIDS, are freed again after their fourth hold-up in three weeks.

1996: Chechen rebels push back Russian armoured columns trying to reinforce besieged government buildings in Grozny.

1997: A nationwide strike in Kenya is called by constitutional reform advocates; mobs kill two policemen and shops are looted in the capital.

1998: Taliban forces enter Mazar-e-Sharif, the last major Afghan city outside their control, killing eight Iranian diplomats and bringing Afghanistan and Iran to the brink of war.

2000: The wreckage of the Hunley, a Confederate submarine that was lost during the American Civil War, was raised from the ocean floor near Sullivans Island, South Carolina — the first submarine to sink (in 1864) an enemy ship (the Union sloop Housatonic).

2005: President Robert Mugabe rejects calls for talks with Zimbabwe’s Opposition leader on resolving the country’s political and economic crisis.

2006: Suspected gang members in Brazil exchange gunfire with police and burn buses in Sao Paulo for a second day; battles between rival drug groups in Rio de Janeiro leave at least 12 dead.

2007: Jakarta holds local elections for the first time, the latest in a wave of votes hailed as key to strengthening democracy in Indonesia. Carlos Slim overtakes Bill Gates as the world’s richest person with an estimated net worth of US$59 billion, according to Fortune.

2008: Georgian troops launch a major offensive to regain control over the breakaway province of South Ossetia; Russia, in retaliation, sends a column of tanks into the region.

2009: Lady Gladys Bustamante is buried beside her husband, Sir Alexander Bustamante, at National Heores’ Park in Jamaica.

2010: The bodies of 10 slain volunteers on a medical team, some of whom had devoted whole decades of their lives to helping the Afghan people through war and deprivation, are flown back to Kabul by helicopter as friends and family bitterly reject Taliban claims the group — six Americans, two Afghans, a German and a Briton — had tried to convert Afghans to Christianity.

2011: Tibetan scholar Lobsang Sangay is inaugurated as prime minister of the Tibetan Government-in-exile, becoming the first non-monk and the first person born outside Tibet to hold the position.

2013: Hindi film Chennai Express premieres and becomes the fastest Bollywood film to earn US$1 billion.

2014: The West African Ebola outbreak is categorised as an international concern by the World Health Organization.

2017: In the Kenyan general election President Uhuru Kenyatta and the Jubilee Party of Kenya are re-elected but Opposition leader Raila Odinga refuses the verdict.

2018: Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales is declared 100 per cent in drought. The US State Department imposes new sanctions on Russia for a nerve attack in Britain.

2019: A nuclear accident at a Russian nuclear weapon testing site at closed city Sarov kills five scientists in mysterious circumstances.

2021: The USA women’s basketball team wins it’s record-extending seventh-consecutive Olympic gold medal with a 90-75 victory over Japan in Tokyo; guards Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi each win their fifth straight gold.

2022: Record downpours in Seoul, South Korea, with some areas receiving their highest rainfall in 80 years (141.5 mm per hour), leaves at least eight dead.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Francis Hutcheson, Scottish philosopher (1694-1746); Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary (1879-1919); P A M Dirac, British physicist and Nobel laureate (1902-1984); Dino DeLaurentiis, Italian film producer (1919-2010); Dustin Hoffman, US actor (1937- ); Peter Weir, Australian film director (1944- ); Roger Federer, Swiss tennis player (1981- )

– AP/Jamaica Observer