Today is the 206th day of 2023. There are 159 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1978: The world’s first test-tube baby (conceived using in vitro fertilisation), weighing 5 pounds, 12 ounces, is delivered by Caesarean section in Lancashire, England and named Louise Brown.

OTHER EVENTS

1593: France’s King Henry IV becomes a Roman Catholic for the second and final time, in an effort to gain Paris and be recognised as the legitimate king.

1814: English engineer George Stephenson introduces his first steam locomotive, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on the Killingworth wagonway, named Blücher.

1830: France’s King Charles X issues ordinances controlling the press, dissolving legislative chambers, and changing the electoral system.

1934: Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss is assassinated in an unsuccessful Nazi coup attempt in Austria.

1943: Benito Mussolini is forced to resign as prime minister of Italy during World War II.

1952: Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.

1963: The United States, Soviet Union and Britain conclude a treaty prohibiting nuclear testing in the atmosphere, space or under water.

1968: Pope Paul VI bans all artificial birth control methods for Roman Catholics.

1971: Dr Christiaan Barnard transplants two lungs and a heart into a man in Cape Town, South Africa, and the operation is described as successful.

1973: A federal judge rules that the US Government must halt its bombing of Cambodia on the grounds it is “unauthorised and unlawful”.

1984: Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Yevgenyevna Savitskaya becomes the first woman to walk in space.

1988: A group of 700 Aborigines riot in Geraldton, western Australia, following the funeral of an Aboriginal man who died in police custody.

1991: Mikhail Gorbachev tells Communist Party leaders that building communism in the Soviet Union is no longer a realistic goal and that the party must reject “outdated ideological dogmas”.

1992: The Italian Government sends 7,000 soldiers to Sicily in a Mafia crackdown.

1993: Black gunmen attack a church near Cape Town, killing 10 white worshippers.

1997: Scientists announce the first human stem cells to be cultured in a laboratory using tissue taken from aborted human embryos. Autumn Jackson is found guilty of trying to extort $40 million from Bill Cosby.

1998: Government officials say US President Bill Clinton has been subpoenaed to testify in the Monica Lewinsky case.

2000: A Concorde supersonic airplane — Air France flight 4590 — crashes outside Paris, killing all 109 people on-board and four others on the ground; the event is believed to have hastened the end of all Concorde operations three years later.

2003: Argentine President Nestor Kirchner revokes a decree that prohibits the extradition of Argentine officials accused of torture or murder during the 1976-83 military dictatorship’s “dirty war” against leftist opponents.

2004: Israelis form a human chain stretching 55 miles (90 kilometres) from Gaza to Jerusalem to protest Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza Strip withdrawal plan, as violence leaves six Palestinian militants dead and five Israeli children wounded in the bloodiest clash in the West Bank in a month.

2006: Thousands of Opposition supporters in Congo clash with riot police, burning President Joseph Kabila’s campaign posters before historic weekend elections meant to bring lasting peace to the nation.

2008: US President George W Bush signs an executive order to expand sanctions against individuals and organisations in Zimbabwe associated with the regime of President Robert Mugabe.

2009: Lady Gladys Bustamante, the highly regarded Jamaican defender of women’s and workers’ rights, dies.

2010: President Hugo Chavez threatens to cut off oil sales to the United States if Venezuela is attacked by its US-allied neighbour Colombia in a dispute over allegations Venezuela gives haven to Colombian rebels.

2011: The self-described perpetrator of Norway’s deadly bombing and shooting rampage, which claimed 77 lives, is ordered held in solitary confinement after calmly telling a court that two other cells of collaborators stand ready to join his murderous campaign.

2013: A Spanish train that hurtles off the rails and smashes into a security wall as it rounds a bend was going so fast that carriages tumbled off the tracks like dominoes, killing 80 people and maiming dozens more.

2014 Palestinian officials call for a “Day of Rage” in the West Bank and within Israel, against Israel’s operation against Gaza.

2016: Verizon announces its US$4.83-billion purchase of Yahoo.

2017: Sperm counts have halved in the last 40 years, according to research published in the Human Reproduction Update journal.

2018: Multiple suicide bombings and attacks by the Islamic State in Sweida and surrounding areas of Syria kill more than 200. Somalia’s attorney general announces the country’s first prosecution for female genital mutilation after the death of a 10-year-old girl.

2019: The US Justice Department announces the resumption of use of the death penalty, scheduling five executions.

2021: The USA’s men’s basketball team see their 25-game Olympic winning streak end when they are beaten 83-76 by France in a first-round match in Tokyo.

2022: The United Nations says 209 people were killed in gang violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, over 10 days and a further 254 were injured by gunshot wounds; no gang members were numbered among the dead.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Arthur J Balfour, English statesman (1848-1930); Davidson Black, Canadian physician-anthropologist (1884-1934); Elias Canetti, Bulgarian writer and Nobel laureate (1905-1994); Estelle Getty, US actress (1923-2008); Rita Marley, reggae singer and philanthropist (1946- ); Iman, Somali model-actress (1955- ); Matt LeBlanc, US actor (1967- )

– AP and Jamaica Observer