Today is the 261st day of 2023. There are 104 days left in the year.

TODAY HIGHLIGHT

2021: US authorities begin moving, for repatriation, more than 10,000 mostly Haitian migrants living under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas.

OTHER EVENTS

1851: The New York Times newspaper publishes its first issue.

1898: A British expedition trying to establish a north-south corridor the length of Africa reaches the fort of Fashoda in Sudan, only to find it occupied by the French; the stand-off brings the countries to the brink of war.

1916: The Greek army surrenders to the Germans at Kavalla, Greece, in World War I.

1927: The Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System — later CBS — debuts in the United States with a network of 16 radio stations.

1932: King Ibn Saud unifies the dual kingdom of the Hejaz and Najd under the name Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

1938: The People’s National Party (PNP) is launched in Jamaica.

1947: The US National Security Act — unifying the navy, army, and newly formed air force — goes into effect.

1948: Indonesian communists set up a Soviet-style Government in Java but are forced to withdraw.

1955: At least 166 people are killed, 100 go missing, and 1,000 are injured due to destructive winds and floods in the central and northern Gulf Coast area of Mexico where Hurricane Hilda struck.

1961: Swedish UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in a plane crash that generated much speculation; a 2017 investigation finds “it appears plausible that an external attack or threat may have been a cause of the crash”.

1967: The United States announces it will build an anti-missile network to counter any attack by China. Explosives planted by Communist terrorists destroy Taiwan’s embassy in Saigon.

1970: American rock guitarist and singer Jimi Hendrix — who fused American traditions of blues, jazz, rock, and soul with techniques of British avant-garde rock to redefine the electric guitar in his own image — dies of an overdose of barbiturates in London.

1973: East Germany, West Germany, and The Bahamas are admitted to the United Nations.

1975: Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst is captured by the FBI in San Francisco, 19 months after being kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and then becoming one of its members.

1978: Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim Kamel and ambassador to United States Ashraf Ghorbal resign in protest of Egypt’s Camp David agreement with Israel.

1993: A United Nations investigation finds Liberian army troops responsible for shooting, bludgeoning, and mutilating more than 400 refugees, most of whom were women and children.

1994: US President Bill Clinton announces Haiti’s strongman Raoul Cedras has agreed to leave power by October 15 and permit US troops to enter the country.

1997: Media mogul Ted Turner pledges US$1 billion to the United Nations.

1998: The Basque separatist group ETA begins observing an open-ended ceasefire after 30 years of fighting for an independent homeland in lands straddling northern Spain and south-west France.

2000: Three gangs of armed gunmen break into three jails on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in separate incidents, freeing more than 200 inmates, many of them convicted and suspected drug traffickers.

2001: Letters postmarked in Trenton, New Jersey, which test positive for anthrax, are sent to the New York Post and US NBC’s broadcasting network anchor Tom Brokaw.

2002: The Burundi’s Government reports 173 civilians were killed by uniformed gunmen, one of the worst massacres in the country’s nine-year-old civil war between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.

2003: Akila al-Hashemi, one of three women on the 25-member Iraqi governing council, dies five days after she was shot by unidentified assailants near her home in Baghdad; it is the first assassination of an Iraqi political leader appointed by the US-led occupation authority. A general strike called by Maoist rebels shuts down most of Nepal.

2004: A divided UN Security Council approves a resolution threatening oil sanctions against Sudan unless it acts to rein in Arab militias blamed for a 19-month killing and looting spree in Darfur that the United States calls genocide.

2005: Afghans choose a legislature for the first time in decades, embracing their newly recovered democratic rights and braving threats of Taliban attacks to cast votes in schools, tents and mosques.

2006: Members of the International Monetary Fund agree to modify the organisation’s power structure to grant a greater share of votes to China, South Korea, Turkey, and Mexico.

2007: While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, linguistics experts say.

2008: In an effort to contain the global credit crisis, the US Federal Reserve joins with the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the Bank of Japan, as well as the central banks of Canada and Switzerland to make US$180 billion in currency exchanges available.

2009: Tens of thousands of protesters — many decked out in the green colour of the reform movement and chanting “Death to the dictator!” — rally in defiance of Iran’s Islamic leadership, clashing with police and confronting State-run anti-Israel rallies.

2010: Despite Taliban rocket strikes and bombings, Afghans vote for a new Parliament — the first election since a fraud-marred presidential ballot the previous year cast doubt on the legitimacy of the embattled Government.

2011: Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn breaks his silence four months after a New York hotel maid accused him of sexual assault, calling his encounter with the woman a “moral failing” he deeply regrets but insisting in an interview on French television that no violence was involved.

2014: Scottish voters reject a referendum that would have made Scotland an independent country. A series of attacks in various places in Baghdad leave at least 45 people dead, with 29 of the fatalities resulting from a coordinated attack in a Shi’ite neighbourhood.

2015: The Government of Uttar Pradesh, India, confirms 2.3 million people applied for 238 menial office jobs.

2017: Hurricane Maria passes over the Caribbean island of Dominica at Category 5 hurricane, destroying 90 per cent of structures and killing 27.

2018: China announces new US$60-billion tariffs on US imports, a day after the US imposes US$200 billion worth of new tariffs on Chinese goods.

2019: The Indian Government proposes a ban on e-cigarettes.

2020: The earliest dated evidence for the human species in the Arabian Peninsula, as fossilised footprints 120,000 years old, are uncovered in Saudi Arabia’s Nefud Desert.

2022: Typhoon Nanmadol, one of the biggest to ever strike Japan, makes landfall on Kyushu island with winds of 180 km/h (112mph), forcing four million people to evacuate.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Samuel Johnson, English poet-critic (1709-1784); Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault, French scientist (1819-1868); Greta Garbo, Swedish-born actress (1905-1990); Agnes Demille, US dancer-choreographer (1905-1993); Kwame Nkrumah, Ghanaian statesman (1909-1972)

– AP/ Jamaica Observer