Today is the 332nd day of 2023. There are 33 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS

1893: Vere Johns, the Jamaican journalist, impresario, radio personality, and actor who helped launch many Jamaican musicians’ careers through his talent concerts, is born.

2022: Qatar Football World Cup Chief Hassan Al-Thawadi confirms 400-5000 immigrant workers died during the building of World Cup venues.

OTHER EVENTS

1814: The Times of London is first printed by automatic, steam-powered presses built by German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, making newspapers available to a mass audience.

1871: Ku Klux Klan trials begin in Federal District Court in South Carolina.

1922: Six former ministers of Greece are executed.

1942: Almost 500 people perish in a fire that destroys Coconut Grove nightclub in Boston, Massachusetts.

1950: The US Atomic Energy Commission announces a 250,000-acre tract in South Carolina as the site for hydrogen bomb plants.

1967: Communist China is turned down for admission to United Nations, for the 18th time.

1971: Jordan’s Prime Minister Wasfi Tell is assassinated by Palestinian guerrillas while attending an Arab conference in Cairo, Egypt.

1975: As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, the final two American soap operas that had resisted going to pre-taped broadcasts, air their last live episodes.

1980: Haitian police arrest some 200 journalists, politicians, human rights activists, doctors and teachers for alleged communist-inspired agitation and criticising the Government’s economic policies.

1990: Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew steps down after 31 years in power.

1991: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi says he will not surrender two Libyans accused of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

1994: Norwegians reject European Union membership.

1996: A former Rio de Janeiro state trooper, Nelson Oliveira dos Santos Cunha, is found guilty of murdering eight homeless youths in July 1993; he is sentenced to 261 years in prison.

2001: Enron Corp, the largest US energy-trading concern, collapses after its credit is downgraded to junk bond status and its smaller rival, Dynegy Inc, backs out of a US$9-billion deal to buy the troubled company.

2003: Opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hold a drive to collect the 2.4 million signatures needed for a recall election to remove Chavez from office.

2004: Iran agrees not to test any centrifuges as part of a total suspension of nuclear activities that could yield weapons-grade uranium.

2006: Russia announces it is lifting its ban on Moldovan wine and meat products, allegedly to ease Moscow’s entry into World Trade Organization.

2010: Hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters protest outside vote-counting stations, denouncing “widespread fraud” in Egypt’s Parliament elections as the Government seems determined to ensure its monopoly over the legislature.

2015: British boxer Tyson Fury beats Ukrainian Wladimir Klitschko to win the WBA, WBO, IBF, IBO, The Ring magazine and lineal heavyweight titles in Düsseldorf, Germany, ending Klitschko’s nine-year reign as champion.

2016: A plane carrying the Brazilian Chapecoense football team crashes near Medellin, Colombia, killing 71 players and journalists.

2017: India’s Supreme Court rejects an appeal to block the global release of controversial film Padmavati.

2018: Australian State Queensland raises its fire warning to “catastrophic” as 130 fires rage.

2019: Zimbabwe is on the brink of man-made starvation, according to the United Nations.

2022: London’s Horniman Museum becomes the first UK museum to return items to Nigeria that were originally looted from Benin City by British troops in 1897. In a recordbreaking outbreak of avian flu across the USA, 50 million birds are killed, according to the Department of Agriculture.

2022: The cocaine “super cartel” that controlled one-third of the European trade is broken up in Operation Desert Light by Europol; 30 tonnes of the drug are seized, 49 people arrested.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Berry Gordy Jr, US Motown Records founder (1929- ); Alfonso Cuarón, Mexican director and screenwriter (1961- – AP/Jamaica Observer