This is the 278th day of 2023. There are 87 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2021: The Nobel Prize for Physics is awarded to Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi for their pioneering work that warns of climate change.

OTHER EVENTS

1947: In the first televised White House address, US President Harry S Truman asks Americans to refrain from eating meat on Tuesdays and poultry on Thursdays to help stockpile grain for starving people in Europe.

1974: The Irish Republican Army bombs two pubs in Guildford, Surrey, in England, resulting in five deaths and dozens of injuries; four men who became known as the Guildford Four were convicted of the bombings but were ultimately vindicated.

1978: US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance travels to South Africa to promote the transition to black rule in Namibia.

1981: Former Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is posthumously granted honorary US citizenship for his humanitarian actions during World War II.

1984: The space shuttle Challenger blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center on an eight-day mission; the crew included Kathryn D Sullivan, who becomes the first American woman to walk in space, and Marc Garneau, the first Canadian astronaut.

1987: South Africa’s President P W Botha says his Government plans to permit some multiracial neighbourhoods.

1988: Chileans, in a plebiscite, turn down a proposal to extend General Augusto Pinochet’s rule until 1997.

1989: The Dalai Lama wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1990: A jury in Cincinnati acquits an art gallery and its director of obscenity charges stemming from an exhibit of sexually graphic photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe.

1993: China breaks its moratorium on nuclear testing.

1994: A total of 48 bodies are found in two locations in Switzerland after a cult’s mass suicide-murder.

1996: Bosnia’s three-member presidency gets off to a rocky start as the Serb member refuses to attend the inauguration.

1997: Schoolchildren numbering 16 and their bus driver are killed in Algeria when their bus is sprayed by gunfire at a false roadblock.

1998: A committee of the US Congress votes to recommend an impeachment inquiry of President Bill Clinton’s actions in the case involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

1999: Two packed commuter trains collide near London’s Paddington Station, killing 31 people.

2000: Mass demonstrations in Belgrade, often called the Bulldozer Revolution, culminate in the resignation of Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milošević.

2001: A 63-year-old Florida man dies of the inhaled form of anthrax, the first of a series of anthrax cases in Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Washington.

2005: Powerful warlords, a former Taliban commander, and women’s rights activists are among the front-runners after ballot-counting ends in Afghanistan’s landmark parliamentary elections. The Church of England confirms John Sentamu as archbishop of York, the church’s second-highest position after archbishop of Canterbury; Sentamu is the first black cleric to become an Anglican archbishop.

2006: European Union ministers endorse a plan to make joint patrols that pick up migrants on the high seas permanent, moving to end internal divisions regarding dealing with a surge in illegal immigration from Africa.

2007: Following years of speculation — and denials — American track star Marion Jones pleads guilty in White Plains, New York, to steroid use and lying to federal investigators when she denied using performance-enhancing drugs, and announces her retirement after the hearing; several months later she is stripped of her five Olympic medals, three of which were gold.

2008: President George W Bush defends his Administration’s methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects, saying both are successful and lawful. Topps Meat Co says it is closing its business, six days after it was forced to issue a massive beef recall. Germany becomes the latest country to move to allay fears about the financial meltdown, enhancing a rescue plan for Hypo Real Estate AG and guaranteeing private bank accounts as European governments scramble on their own to save failing banks.

2010: Former French trader Jerome Kerviel is convicted on all counts in history’s biggest rogue trading scandal; he is sentenced to at least three years in prison and ordered to pay his former employer damages of euro 4.9 billion (US$6.7 billion) — a sum so staggering it drew gasps in the courtroom.

2011: Apple founder Steve Jobs, 56, dies in Palo Alto, California. The New York Police Department’s intelligence squad secretly assigns an undercover officer to monitor a prominent Muslim leader even as he decried terrorism, cooperated with the police, and dined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

2013: A month before the presidential election the US Labor Department reports that unemployment fell in September 2012 to its lowest level, 7.8 per cent, since President Barack Obama took office; some Republicans question whether the numbers have been manipulated.

2014: Mexican security forces investigating the role of municipal police in deadly clashes with protesters find buried human remains in mass graves on the edge of Iguala in the country’s south.

2015: Floods in South Carolina, a “1,000-year storm”, result in 12 deaths and cause nine dams to fail. Governor of California Jerry Brown signs a Bill giving terminally ill patients the “right to die”.

2017: The New York Times publishes its investigation into sexual harassment behaviour by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The Spanish constitutional court suspends the Catalan Parliament to prevent the declaration of independence.

2018: Banksy work Girl With Balloon automatically shreds moments after being sold for one million pounds in London; it is then renamed Love is in the Bin. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded jointly to Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege and Yazidi activist Nadia Murad for their “efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war”.

2019: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reveals he has a neuromuscular disease, myasthenia gravis, causing him health problems.

2020: At least 14m tonnes of plastic pieces are at the bottom of the ocean, 30 times more than on the surface according to new research. US President Donald Trump leaves Walter Reed National Military Medical Center while still infectious with COVID-19 and returns to the White House.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Robert Goddard, US inventor of the modern rocket (1882-1945); Glynis Johns, South African-born actress (1923- ); Diane Cilento, Australian actress (1933-2011); Vaclav Havel, Czech politician, playwright and former dissident (1936-2011); Delroy Wilson, Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae singer (1948-1995); Kate Winslet, British actress (1975- )

– AP/Jamaica Observer