Today is the 192nd day of 2023. There are 173 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS

1995: A total of 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men are massacred when Bosnian Serbs overrun the UN ‘safe haven’ of Srebrenica.

OTHER EVENTS

1533: Pope Clement VII excommunicates England’s King Henry VIII, after his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon is annulled to allow him to wed Anne Boleyn.

1614: The Swedish army defeats Russian forces at Bronnitsy and gains a continuous territorial base (from Finland to Estonia) which blocks Russia from access to the Baltic Sea.

1810: The Napoleonic Empire annexes Holland.

1877: Kate Edger becomes New Zealand’s first female graduate and first woman in the British Empire to earn a Bachelor of Arts.

1914: George Herman “Babe” Ruth plays in his first major league baseball game, for the Boston Red Sox.

1960: Premier Moise Tshombe of Katanga (now part of Congo) proclaims independence of that province. American author Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is published and becomes a classic, noted for its sensitive treatment of a child’s awakening to racism and prejudice in the South.

1963: South African police raid the secret headquarters of the African National Congress in a farmhouse north of Johannesburg; Walter Sisulu and other leaders are arrested. The army in Ecuador ousts President Carlos Julio Arosemena, accusing him of being a communist sympathiser.

1967: Communist-led mobs of Chinese in Hong Kong step up violent activities; British authorities halt all public transport as a safety measure.

1971: The Moroccan Government says leaders of a coup against King Hassan have been slain or arrested.

1978: A truck carrying industrial gas explodes and sets fire to a campsite on the Mediterranean coast in Spain, killing at least 180 people.

1987: The United Nations proclaims newborn boy Matej Gaspar in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), the world’s five billionth inhabitant.

1989: British actor Laurence Olivier, arguably the greatest English-speaking actor of the 20th century, dies near London.

1990: Hundreds of thousands of miners in Ukraine hold a one-day strike to protest the policies of the Soviet Government.

1991: A jetliner carrying Nigerian pilgrims crashes in flames in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, killing all 261 people aboard.

1992: Former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in US prison for money laundering and drug trafficking.

1993: Military rulers and Opposition leaders agree to hold presidential elections in Togo, the first step to resolving a power struggle that claimed hundreds of lives in the West African country.

1994: Seven East European technicians are shot dead in two attacks in Algeria, the victims of a campaign by Islamist extremists to cripple the economy and topple the Government.

1998: Brushing aside international calls for a ceasefire, Serb forces pound Albanian rebels outside Pec in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, sending hundreds of civilians fleeing through the mountains.

1999: A heatwave and a violent storm converge on Central and Eastern Europe, killing more than a dozen people and blocking rails and roads; hail causes extensive damage and kills hundreds of farm animals.

2000: A damaged gasoline pipeline explodes in southern Nigeria, killing 200 people and injuring dozens of others.

2001: Weeping Bosnian Muslim widows who lost their husbands and sons in one of the worst massacres in modern history lash out at Slobodan Milosevic and fugitive leaders of the Bosnian Serbs, on the sixth anniversary of the slaughter in Srebrenica.

2002: South Korean President Kim Dae-jung appoints the country’s first female prime minister, Chang Sang.

2003: The Central Intelligence Agency accepts responsibility for the false claim regarding Iraq obtaining uranium from Niger, in US President George W Bush’s January State of the Union address.

2004: Italian Coast Guard motorboats block a German aid ship from docking in Sicily after it sails southern Mediterranean waters for three weeks in search of a haven for its passengers, including 36 Sudanese seeking asylum.

2005: Two gun attacks in Belfast leave one man dead and another critically wounded on the eve of Northern Ireland’s tensest day of the year — the divisive “Twelfth” holiday of mass Protestant marches.

2006: Eight bombs hit Bombay’s commuter rail network during rush hour in the financial hub of India, killing at least 200 people and wounding hundreds more.

2007: Pakistani troops complete an eight-day siege and storming of Islamabad’s radical Red Mosque; some 102 people die, including 10 elite troops and at least 73 suspected pro-Taliban militants.

2008: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fuad Saniora forms a national unity Cabinet in which Hezbollah and its allies have veto power over Government decisions.

2009: The deaths of eight British soldiers in Afghanistan within 24 hours triggers a debate in Britain that could undercut public support for the war, just as the US is ramping up its own participation in the conflict.

2010: Spain defeats the Netherlands 1-0 in extra time to win the World Cup.

2011: An aging cruise ship is severely overcrowded, has a malfunctioning engine, and lists to one side before it sinks in heavy wind and rain on a river east of Moscow, killing as many as 129 people.

2012: Decades after the US gave Laos a horrific distinction as the world’s most heavily bombed country per person, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledges to help get rid of millions of unexploded bombs that still pockmark the impoverished country and continue to kill.

2013: Hundreds of Shiites are quietly expelled from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states, on suspicion of being supporters of militant group Hezbollah.

2014: Jamaican former Governor General Sir Howard Cooke dies.

2015: Mexican criminal Joaquín Guzmán, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, escapes from prison using a lengthy underground tunnel; a massive manhunt follows and he is captured again some six months later.

2018: The oldest stone tools outside Africa are discovered in Lantian country, western China, and are estimated to be 2.12 million years old and made by hominins.

2019: The last models of Volkswagen’s Beetle car are produced in Pueblo, Mexico, ending production worldwide after 80 years.

2021: Billionaire Richard Branson flies to the edge of space on his rocket plane in space tourism test.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Robert I the Bruce, Scottish king (1274-1329); Thomas Bowdler, English editor of Shakespeare works (1754-1825); Peter I Karageorgevic, first king of Yugoslavia (1844-1921); Gough Whitlam, Australian prime minister (1916-2014); Yul Brynner, Russian-born actor (1920-1985); Nicolai Gedda, Swedish operatic tenor (1925-2017); John Holt, reggae singer and songwriter (1947-2014); Lil’ Kim, US rapper (1975- )

— AP and Jamaica Observer