Today is the 163rd day of 2023. There are 202 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1667: A 15-year-old boy is the first to receive a blood transfusion when Jean-Baptiste Denys, physician of French King Louis XIV, treats his fever with lamb’s blood.

OTHER EVENTS

1830: French colonisation of Algeria begins when 34,000 French soldiers land 27 kilometres west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch.

1882: Anti-foreign riots break out in Alexandria, Egypt.

1901: The Cuban Convention makes this nation virtually a protectorate of the United States.

1931: Al Capone is indicted on 5,000 counts of prohibition and perjury.

1935: Paraguay and Bolivia sign a truce ending the bloody three-year Chaco War; Paraguay gets most of the disputed Chaco region while Bolivia gets a river port.

1937: Stalin’s purge of Russian generals begins.

1940: Japanese planes bomb Chungking, China, capital of the Nationalist movement.

1942: Anne Frank gets her diary as a birthday present in Amsterdam.

1952: Nordic nationals are able to cross their countries’ borders without passports for the first time.

1964: Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and other anti-apartheid leaders are sentenced to life in prison in South Africa.

1976: A military coup in Uruguay overthrows civilian President Juan Bordaberry, beginning a nine-year dictatorship.

1987: Central African Republic’s former Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa is sentenced to death for murder, arbitrary arrest, and embezzlement of public funds.

1988: Demonstrations erupt over a controversial constitutional amendment making Islam the State religion in Bangladesh.

1993: UN forces launch an offensive against Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid.

1994: Ex-wife of US football star O J Simpson, Nicole Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman are found murdered.

1999: NATO troops flood Kosovo and come face to face with Russian troops who seize the airport in Pristina, in an unexpected move; the Russian foreign minister calls the Russian deployment a mistake.

2003: Gregory Peck — most noted for his role as Atticus Finch in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird — dies at age 87. The UN Security Council passes a US-backed resolution that grants immunity from prosecution, by the International Criminal Court (ICC), to US and other citizens on UN missions from countries that had not ratified the court’s founding treaty.

2004: Iraq’s deputy foreign minister is gunned down on his way to work — the first assassination of a senior official since a new interim Government was announced.

2005: Palestinian authorities carry out their first executions since 2002, killing four convicted murderers by firing squad in a campaign meant to halt a growing wave of lawlessness.

2007: A Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicts former Croatian Serb leader Milan Martic of mass murders, torture and persecution of non-Serbs from 1991-1995.

2008: Nepalese officials take control of the main royal palace in Katmandu, a day after deposed King Gyanendra left to begin life as a civilian.

2009: The UN Security Council imposes new sanctions on North Korea, toughening an arms embargo and authorising ship searches on the high seas, in an attempt to thwart the reclusive nation’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

2010: Toy Story 3 premieres at the Taormina Film Fest in Italy — the first animated film to earn US$1 billion. Ethnic riots wrack southern Kyrgyzstan, forcing thousands of Uzbeks to flee as their homes are torched by roving mobs of Kyrgyz men; the Kremlin offers only humanitarian assistance when the interim Government begs Russia for troops to stop the violence.

2013: Turkey’s Government offers the first concrete gesture aimed at ending nearly two weeks of street protests, proposing a referendum on a development project in Istanbul that triggered demonstrations which became the biggest challenge to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 10-year tenure.

2014: Ukraine’s president rallies support for his plan to end fighting in the country’s east during phone calls with Russian and German leaders.

2016: The deadliest mass shooting in US history up to that time occurrs when Omar Mateen opens fire at Pulse, an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and wounding more than 50.

2018: A Singapore summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump marks the first time a North Korean leader and an incumbent US President have ever met.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Charles Kingsley, British author-social reformer (1819-1875); Vinton Ruth Beckett, Jamaican Olympian (1923-2018); George H W Bush, former US president (1924-2018); Anne Frank, German-Jewish Holocaust diarist (1929-1945); Grandmaster Dee, US rapper (1962- ); Bounty Killer (born Rodney Basil Price), Jamaican reggae singer and dancehall deejay (1972- )

— AP/Jamaica Observer