Today is the 221st day of 2023. There are 144 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1936: In a blow to Adolf Hitler’s plan to have the Berlin Olympics prove Aryan superiority, black US athlete Jesse Owens becomes the first Olympian to win four Olympic gold medals.

OTHER EVENTS

480 BC: Greek troops led by Spartan King Leonidas are overcome by the Persians at Thermopylae, after a heroic stand.

1173: Construction of the Tower of Pisa begins and takes two centuries to complete.

1483: The Sistine Chapel opens in the Vatican.

1638: Jonas Bronck of Holland becomes the first European settler in the Bronx.

1790: Robert Gray’s Columbia Rediviva returns to Boston after a three-year journey, the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe and carry the American flag around the world.

1803: The first horses arrive in Hawaii.

1831: The first US steam engine train run takes place from Albany to Schenectady, New York, in the United States.

1849: The Hungarian Republic is crushed by Austria and Russia.

1859: Otis Tufts patents the first passenger elevator in the US.

1898: Rudolf Diesel of Germany obtains patent #608,845 for his internal combustion engine, later known as the diesel engine.

1905: Major League Baseball (MLB) Ty Cobb’s mother, Amanda kills her husband after mistaking him for a burglar.

1904: Libanus McLouth Todd of Rochester, New York, patents his cheque-writing machine, the Protectograph, designed to protect against cheque forgers.

1910: Chicago resident Alva Fisher receives a US patent for an electric washing machine.

1942: Mahatma Gandhi and 50 others are arrested by Britain in Bombay after the passing of a “Quit India” motion and a campaign by the All-India Congress.

1945: A US plane drops a second atomic bomb that destroys more than half of Nagasaki, Japan, and kills an estimated 74,000 people; despite nuclear proliferation it marks the last time any country used such a device for mass destruction in combat.

1965: Singapore proclaims its independence from the Malaysian Federation.

1969: US actress Sharon Tate and four other people are found murdered in her Los Angeles home; cult leader Charles Manson and his disciples are later convicted.

1974: Richard Nixon becomes the first United States president to resign from office.

1985: Fighting in Beirut breaks out between Christian and Muslim militiamen; at least 43 people die.

1988: Army troops in Yangon, Myanmar, open fire on thousands of demonstrators who call for overthrow of President Sein Lwin.

1991: Hundreds of police use guns and tear gas to battle pro-apartheid activists who try to stop President F W de Klerk from speaking in Ventersdorp, South Africa.

1994: Hijackers kill a Cuban navy lieutenant and force four sailors overboard before setting sail in the commandeered vessel for the United States.

1999: Russian President Boris Yeltsin fires his Cabinet, naming Vladimir Putin as his new prime minister.

2006: Louise “Miss Lou” Bennett-Coverley is laid to rest at Jamaica’s National Heroes’ Park.

2007: Mauritania passes a law promising jail time for slaveholders, an important step in the north-west African country’s push to eliminate a practice that has quietly persisted despite a 25-year-old ban.

2009: A typhoon pummels China’s eastern coast, forcing nearly a million people to flee to safety.

2012: Jamaican sprint legend Usain Bolt wins the 200m at the London Olympics in 19.32, becoming the first to win the 100/200m double in back-to-back Olympics.

2014: Michael Brown, an unarmed African American teenager, is fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri; tensions between Ferguson’s predominantly black population and its predominantly white Government and police department result in days of civil unrest and protests.

2020: Brazil passes 100,000 COVID-19 deaths, the world’s second highest, with over three million recorded cases.

2021: The cholera outbreak in Nigeria has to date killed more than 800 people, with 31,425 suspected cases since January 2021, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

2022: Tennis superstar Serena Williams announces her intention to retire, in an interview with Vogue magazine.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Isaak Walton, English biographer (1593-1683); Tove Jansson, Finnish author (1914-2001); Leonid Kuchma, former president of Ukraine (1938- ); Whitney Houston, US singer (1963-2012); Eric Bana, Australian actor (1968- ).

– AP and Jamaica Observer