Today is the 200th day of 2023. There are 165 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2019: A heatwave begins across the east of America affecting 100 million people and killing six, with New York city declaring a state of emergency.

OTHER EVENTS

1324: Mansa Musa, ruler of the Mali Empire, arrives in Cairo on his way to Mecca with a procession of 600,000 men, 12,000 slaves and 80 camels carrying 136 kg (300 pounds) of gold each.

1848: The first women’s rights convention is held in Seneca Falls, New York, and is organised by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.

1864: Nanking, the capital of the Taiping rebellion in China, falls to Government troops who proceed to slaughter 100,000 people.

1870: France declares war on Prussia, setting off the Franco-Prussian War.

1939: American physician Roy P Scholz of St Louis, Missouri, becomes the first surgeon to use fibreglass sutures.

1941: Tom and Jerry first appear under their own names in cartoon The Midnight Snack by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.

1980: The Summer Olympics in Moscow begin, minus dozens of nations boycotting the Games because of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.

1984: Geraldine Ferraro becomes the first American woman to run for vice-president..

1992: A car bomb kills Paolo Borsellino, Sicily’s top Mafia prosecutor.

1993: The United States and North Korea reach an interim agreement to ease confrontation over North Korea’s refusal to permit inspection of suspected nuclear sites.

1999: In southern Mexico, 20 Government supporters are sentenced to 35 years each for a massacre of rebel sympathisers; 21 women, 15 children and nine men were gunned down in December 1997 in Acteal, Chiapas.

2000: An international measure is adopted to block rebel groups from trading “conflict diamonds” to fund Africa’s most vicious civil wars.

2001: Michael Brunet discovers in the Djurab Desert, Chad, the skull of Sahelanthropus tchadensis — one of the oldest known species in the human family tree aged 6-7 million years prior.

2002: An inquiry into the murders committed by British doctor Harold Shipman concludes that he killed 215 of his patients, mainly elderly women, between 1975 and 1998; he was convicted in 2000 for the murder of 15 of his patients.

2003: An Egyptian appeals court acquits 11 men of debauchery for allegedly engaging in homosexual activity; President Hosni Mubarak had ordered a retrial in May 2002 after their initial sentences in November 2001 had sparked international condemnation.

2005: Insurgents set off a bomb near a police minibus in warring Chechnya, killing 14 people including two children, and wounding more than 20 others.

2008: Pope Benedict XVI apologises for the sexual abuse of children by Australia’s Roman Catholic clergy, at a Mass in Sydney.

2011: A scientific autopsy confirms that Chilean President Salvador Allende committed suicide during the 1973 coup that toppled his socialist government.

2015: The World Health Organization puts the world’s Ebola death toll at 11,284.

2017: An archaeological dig in Kakadu National Park extends the Aboriginal peoples time in Australia to 65,000-80,000 years ago. BBC publishes the salaries of its top-earning journalists and presenters and Chris Evans ranks highest at over £2.2 million.

2018: Israel’s Parliament passes its controversial “nation state” law, giving only Jews self-determination while relegating Arabic to “special status”.

2020: World Formula 1 drivers champion Lewis Hamilton wins a record eighth Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest to equal Michael Schumacher’s record of wins at a single circuit (French GP).

2021: The UK lifts the most COVID-19 restrictions on so-called Freedom Day, despite 50,000 new daily infections.

2022: Temperatures exceed 104°F (40°C) in parts of England for the first time ever.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Lizzie Borden, American acquitted murderer (1860-1927); Vincent “Vin” Roy Lumsden, Jamaican former cricketer (1930- ); Brian May, English guitarist with rock group Queen (1947- );

– AP/Jamaica Observer