Today is the 31st day of 2023. There are 334 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1865: The US House of Representatives joins the Senate in passing the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolishing slavery, sending it to states for ratification; the amendment is adopted in December 1865.

OTHER EVENTS

1606: Guy Fawkes, convicted for his part in the “Gunpowder Plot” against the English Parliament and King James I, is executed.

1709: British sailor Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, is rescued after being marooned on a Pacific island for four years.

1917: During World War I, Germany serves notice it will begin a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.

1945: Private Eddie Slovik becomes the only US soldier since the American Civil War to be executed for desertion.

1949: The first US TV daytime soap opera, These Are My Children, is broadcast from the NBC station in Chicago.

1958: The first US earth satellite, Explorer I, is launched at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

1961: NASA launches Ham the Chimp aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket from Cape Canaveral; Ham is recovered safely from the Atlantic Ocean following his 16 1/2-minute suborbital flight.

1962: Foreign ministers of the Organization of American States vote to exclude Cuba from participating in the inter-American system.

1966: The Soviets launch Luna 9, which makes the first successful soft landing on the moon.

1990: The first McDonald’s in Russia opens on Moscow’s Pushkin Square with approximately 38,000 customers waiting for hours in long lines, breaking company records at the time.

1995: The Mexican peso strengthens when US President Bill Clinton announces a multi-billion-dollar credit package aimed at helping Mexico out of its financial crisis.

1996: In one of the worst attacks in Sri Lanka’s 12-year civil war, Tamil separatist rebels ram a truck packed with explosives into the central bank, killing 88 people and injuring more than 1,400.

1997: Mexican drug kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego is sentenced to 11 concurrent life prison terms and fines that total nearly US$500 million.

2000: Japan promises 6 million yen (US$57,000) to North Korea to help preserve ancient tombs near the Stalinist nation’s capital; North Korea hopes to have the tombs of Goguryeo, which contain 1,500-year-old murals, added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

2001: A Scottish court convened in the Netherlands convicts a Libyan intelligence officer of murder and sentences him to life imprisonment for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people; a second Libyan is acquitted.

2008: Pop star Britney Spears is taken from her home by ambulance to UCLA Medical Center, where she is held for a week for psychiatric evaluation.

2013: Chuck Hagel emerges from his gruelling confirmation hearing before the US Senate Armed Services Committee with solid Democratic support for his nomination to be President Barack Obama’s next defence secretary. A gas explosion causes three floors of the headquarters of Mexico’s national oil company Pemex to collapse, killing 37 people. Caleb Moore, 25, an innovative, freestyle snowmobile rider who’d been hurt in a crash at the Winter X Games in Colorado, dies at a hospital in Grand Junction.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Franz Schubert, German composer (1797-1828); Anna Pavlova, Russian ballerina (1885-1931); George Phillip, Grenadian former executive director for Sandals Resorts International and Jamaica Observer, industrial relations specialist, corporate stalwart (1938-2007 ); Minnie Driver, English actress (1970- ); Portia de Rossi, Australian-American former actress (1973- ); Kerry Washington, US actress (1977- ); Justin Timberlake, US singer (1981-)

— AP/ Jamaica Observer