This Day in History – June 14
Today is the 165th day of 2023. There are 200 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1940: During World War II the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp opens in Nazi-controlled Poland, with Polish POWs; Auschwitz is later expanded to include civilian Jews and gypsies of whom approximately 3 million would die within its walls.
OTHER EVENTS
1623: The first breach-of-promise (to marry) lawsuit is filed by Reverend Gerville Pooley in Virginia against Cicely Jordan; Pooley loses.
1642: The first compulsory education law in America is passed by Massachusetts.
1775: The Continental Army, forerunner of the United States Army, is created.
1801: Former American Revolutionary War general and notorious turncoat Benedict Arnold dies in London.
1834: Sandpaper is patented by Isaac Fischer Jr of Springfield, Vermont.
1841: The first Canadian Parliament opens in Kingston, Ontario.
1847: Robert Bunsen invents the Bunsen burner.
1872: Trade unions are legalised in Canada.
1904: Dutch troops occupy Kuto Reh, Sumatra, killing all inhabitants.
1907: Norway adopts female suffrage for middle class women, but only in parliamentary elections.
1923: The first country music hit (Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane) is recorded.
1943: The US Supreme Court, in West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette, rules 6-3 that public school students cannot be forced to salute the flag of the United States.
1949: The Vietnamese State is established at Saigon under former Emperor Bao Dai.
1954: President Dwight D Eisenhower signs a measure adding the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.
1967: British film To Sir, with Love, starring Sidney Poitier, is first released in the United Sates. The US Mariner spacecraft is launched toward Venus to discover if the planet can support life.
1972: The US Environmental Protection Agency orders a ban on domestic use of the pesticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane).
1977: The voice artist for Fred Flintstone, American actor Alan Reed dies at 69. English model Twiggy Lawson, at 27, weds 45-year-old actor Michael Witney.
1985: The 17-day hijack ordeal of TWA Flight 847 begins as a pair of Lebanese Shiite Muslim extremists seize the jetliner shortly after take-off from Athens, Greece.
1990: The US Supreme Court upholds, 6-3, police checkpoints that examine drivers for signs of intoxication.
1993: Tansu Ciller becomes Turkey’s first female prime minister.
1994: Iraq’s trade minister warns that farmers who do not sell their grain harvests to the State will have their hands cut off.
1997: Pol Pot is reported in Cambodia to be fleeing from the Khmer Rouge guerrillas he once commanded.
1999: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) peacekeepers in Kosovo discover the first mass grave, believed to contain 81 bodies, as Serb troops withdraw leaving the houses of ethnic Albanians in flames.
2000: The leaders of North and South Korea sign an agreement aimed at reconciliation and reunification.
2003: East Timor approves a US$1.5-billion natural gas development plan for a pipeline to be built, which will be the largest source of income for the nation.
2005: President Thabo Mbeki fires his deputy and heir apparent who was implicated in a corruption scandal.
2006: Following a surprise visit to Iraq, US President George W Bush dismisses calls for a US withdrawal as election-year politics, refusing to give a timetable or benchmark for success that would allow American troops to come home.
2009: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorses a Palestinian State beside Israel but attaches conditions such as demilitarisation, which Palestinians swiftly reject.
2010: Iraq’s new Parliament convenes for just under 20 minutes – merely symbolic due to unresolved differences over key Government positions, three months after inconclusive elections.
2012: The world’s first stem-cell assisted vein transplant is undertaken by Swedish doctors on a 10-year-old girl.
2013: The US Government charges NSA leaker Edward Snowden with violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property.
2015: Jurassic World becomes the first film to make US$500 million worldwide during its opening weekend.
2017: A rifle-wielding gunman opens fire on Republican lawmakers during congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, wounding House Whip Steve Scalise and several others; the assailant dies in a battle with police.
2018: The US Government confirms 1500 boys being held separated from their parents in Casa Padre, a shelter facility for illegal immigrants in a former Walmart in Brownsville, Texas.
2020: India reports surge of confirmed COVID-19 cases totalling nearly 12,000 a day (320,922 overall), the world’s fourth-affected country, as the death toll hits 9,195.
2021: A heatwave event begins across western US and Canadian states, with Denver at 101 degrees and Helena at 105 degrees.
2022: The first controversial UK flight to take asylum seekers to Rwanda is cancelled after a last-minute legal ruling from the European Court of Human Rights of “real risk of irreversible harm”.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Harriet Beecher Stowe, US writer (1811-1896); John Bartlett, English writer-editor of Familiar Quotations (1820-1905); Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Argentine-born revolutionary (1928-1967); Jerzy Kosinski, Polish-born writer (1933-1991); Donald Trump, US president-TV personality (1946- ); Grace Jackson, 1988 Olympics Jamaican 200m silver medallist (1961- ); Boy George, British pop singer (1961- ); Steffi Graf, German tennis champion (1969- )
— AP/ Jamaica Observer