Today is the 137th day of 2023. There are 228 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1954: A unanimous US Supreme Court hands down its Brown v Board of Education of Topeka decision which holds that racially segregated public schools are inherently unequal, and therefore unconstitutional.

OTHER EVENTS

1792: The New York Stock Exchange has its origins as a group of brokers meet under a tree at 70 Wall Street.

1814: Norway’s constitution is signed, providing for a limited monarchy.

1875: The first Kentucky Derby takes place; the winner is Aristides, ridden by Oliver Lewis.

1934: The military seizes power in Bulgaria from a democratic Government destabilised by the Great Depression.

1940: The Nazis occupy Brussels, Belgium, during World War II.

1946: President Harry S Truman seizes control of the nation’s railroads, delaying — but not preventing — a threatened strike by engineers and trainmen.

1961: Cuban leader Fidel Castro offers to release prisoners captured in the Bay of Pigs invasion in exchange for 500 bulldozers; the prisoners are eventually freed in exchange for medical supplies.

1973: A special committee convened by the US Senate begins its televised hearings into the Watergate scandal.

1980: Rioting that claims 18 lives erupts in Miami’s Liberty City after an all-white jury in Tampa acquits four former Miami police officers of fatally beating black insurance executive Arthur McDuffie.

1983: Israel and Lebanon reach an agreement on the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon; the pull back starts in September.

1987: Some 37 American sailors are killed when an Iraqi warplane attacks the US Navy frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf; Iraq apologises for the attack, calling it a mistake, and pays more than US$27 million in compensation.

1988: Fighting rages in Lebanon despite peace efforts by Syria and Iran.

1990: Two messianic Jews confess to desecrating 300 Jewish graves in Haifa, Israel, in hopes Arabs would be blamed.

1993: Rebels call a strike that cripples public transport and shuts down business in Lima, Peru.

1994: Malawi voters stream from impoverished villages to take part in the first multiparty election in three decades.

1995: Jacques Chirac becomes France’s president, with a promise to rejuvenate a nation scarred by unemployment and inequality.

1996: President Bill Clinton signs Megan’s Law — named for Megan Kanka, a seven-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and murdered in 1994 — requiring neighbourhood notification when sex offenders move in.

1999: Labour party candidate Ehud Barak wins a decisive victory in Israeli elections over hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

2000: Indonesia’s first human rights trial convicts 24 soldiers and a civilian of murdering dozens of villagers during a massacre in Aceh province in 1999.

2001: The UN conference on poverty announces the launch of the World Trade University, a new university to give the world’s poor access to training in international trade and finance.

2003: Sri Lanka’s heaviest rains in 50 years cause flash flooding that kills an estimated 250 people and washes away whole villages, destroying about 55,000 homes; about 150,000 people are made homeless.

2004: Gay couples begin exchanging marriage vows in Massachusetts, marking the first time a US state grants gays and lesbians the right to marry.

2006: The FBI begins digging at a Michigan horse farm in search of the remains of former Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa; the two-week search yields no evidence. The UN Security Council adopts a resolution pressing Syria to establish diplomatic relations and set its border with Lebanon as “a significant step” to asserting Beirut’s sovereignty.

2007: Russian Orthodox leaders sign a pact to heal an 80-year schism between the church in Russia and an offshoot set up abroad, which split off in anger when the Russian church declined to defy the communist Government.

2009: Tamil Tigers admit defeat in their fierce, quarter-century war for a separate homeland as government forces race to clear the last pockets of resistance in northern Sri Lanka.

2010: The last of 10 Americans detained while trying to take 33 children out of Haiti, after the January 12 earthquake, is freed when a judge convicts her but sentences her to time already served in jail.

2011: Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issues a statement confirming a Los Angeles Times report that he had fathered a child with a woman on his household staff more than a decade earlier. US lawmakers warn Pakistan that billions of dollars in American aid are at stake if Islamabad does not step up its efforts against terrorists, a clear sign of growing exasperation after the US takedown of Osama bin Laden deep inside Pakistan.

2015: A shootout erupts between bikers and police outside a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas, leaving nine of the bikers dead and 20 people injured. The contested city of Ramadi, capital of Iraq’s largest province, falls to the Islamic State group in a major loss, despite intensified, US-led air strikes. Pope Francis canonises Sisters Mariam Bawardy and Marie Alphonsine Ghattas, two nuns from what was 19th-century Palestine, in hopes of encouraging Christians across the Middle East who were facing a wave of persecution from Islamic extremists.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Albert of Prussia (or Albrecht von Preussen), German prince, 37th grand master of the Teutonic Knights and first ruler of the Duchy of Prussia (1490-1568); Erik Satie, French composer (1866-1925); Alfonso XIII, king of Spain (1886-1941); Bill Bruford (William Scott Bruford), UK former rock musician (1949- ); Sugar Ray Leonard, American Boxing Hall-of-Famer (1956- ); Enya, Irish singer-songwriter-musician (1961- ); Craig Ferguson, Scottish comedian-actor-writer-television host (1962- ); Hill Harper, American actor (1966- ); Máxima, queen consort of the Netherlands (1971- ); Derek Hough, American dancer-choreographer (1985- )

— AP