This Day in History — December 23
Today is the 357th day of 2022 There are 8 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1996: The Anglican Church in Jamaica ordains four women as priests for the first time in its 330 years in the Caribbean — deacons Sybil May Morris, Patricia Leontine Johnson, Judith Amelia Daniel, and Vivette Angella Jennings were the ordinants.
OTHER EVENTS
1588: Henry, duke of Guise and leader of militant Catholics who wanted a Spanish princess on the French throne, is assassinated on King Henry III’s orders at Blois, France.
1728: Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI and Frederick William of Prussia sign Treaty of Berlin.
1832: The French take Antwerp, forcing Holland to recognise Belgium’s independence.
1861: The sultan of Turkey agrees to unification of Moldavia and Wallachia as Romania.
1876: The first constitution in a Muslim country is passed in Turkey, but power remains largely in the hands of the sultan.
1920: The French and British approve a convention fixing boundaries of Syria and Palestine.
1947: The transistor is invented at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey; this made equipment miniaturisation possible and ushered in a tidal wave of electronic miracles, including the personal computer.
1948: Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese World War II leaders are executed in Tokyo.
1986: The experimental US airplane, Voyager, lands in California’s Mojave Desert after becoming the first aircraft to circumnavigate the globe non-stop without refuelling.
1989: United States sends 2,000 reinforcement troops to Panama to combat unexpectedly stiff resistance from Panamanian troops loyal to ousted General Manuel Antonio Noriega.
1995: A fire in Dabwali, India, kills 540 people, including 170 children, during a year-end party being held near a children’s school.
1997: Gunmen charge into a village of rebel sympathisers in Chiapas, Mexico, and kill 45 people, including 15 children.
1998: South Korean police use water cannons and tear gas to evict a group of monks from the Chogye temple, after the monks threw firebombs and rocks at them. The clash ends a 40-day stand-off between rival monks at the spiritual home to eight million Buddhists.
2001: San Luis Governor Adolfo Rodriguez Saa takes over as interim president of Argentina, immediately halting payments on the nation’s US$132-billion debt. He resigns a week later, saying “an attitude of pettiness and haggling” within his Justicialist party has left him unable to govern.
2005: South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk resigns from his university after he was found to have faked stem-cell breakthroughs that kindled worldwide optimism of revolutionary cures for disease.
2008: A pair of pandas leave China on a long-awaited goodwill journey to their new home in Taiwan, in the latest move symbolising the warming ties between the rivals.
2010: A Romanian television engineer, apparently distraught that budget cuts had reduced benefits for his autistic teenage son, dives more than 20 feet (about seven metres) from a balcony onto the floor of Romania’s Parliament then shouts “Freedom!” as emergency workers take him out on a stretcher.
2013: The last two imprisoned members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot walk free, criticising the amnesty measure that released them as a publicity stunt.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Richard Arkwright, English inventor (1732-1792); Joseph Smith, US founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (1805-1844); Jose Greco, Spanish dancer-choreographer (1918-2000); Olive Senior, internationally acclaimed Jamaican writer and poet (1941- ); Silvia, queen of Sweden (1944- ); Akihito, emperor of Japan (1933- ); Eddie Vedder, US musician (1964- )
– AP/Jamaica Observer