Today is the 145th day of 2023. There are 220 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2020: Video of African American George Floyd’s arrest and murder while restrained in Minneapolis police custody, showing he was pinned to the ground by police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, ignites widespread condemnation and nationwide protests.
OTHER EVENTS
1241: The Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main, Germany is attacked for the first time.
1571: Pope Pius V forms The Holy League with other Catholic maritime states — including Spain, Venice, Naples and Sicily — to fight the Ottomans.
1720: The Ship Le Grand St Antoine reaches Marseille, bringing Europe’s last major plague outbreak which kills around 100,000.
1784: Jews are expelled from Warsaw by Marshall Mniszek.
1887: A gas lamp at Paris Opera catches fire and 200 die.
1895: The trial of acclaimed Irish writer Oscar Wilde ends with him being found guilty of “committing acts of gross indecency with certain male persons”; he is sentenced to two years of hard labour.
1898: Chocolatier Milton S Hershey weds Catherine Sweeney at St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.
1911: A revolution in Mexico overthrows President Porfirio Diaz.
1919: African American entrepreneur and first American, female, self-made millionaire Madame C J Walker dies of kidney failure complications at 51.
1923: The Jamaica Public Service Company Ltd (JPS) is registered. The independence of Transjordan — now Jordan — under Amir Abdullah is proclaimed.
1935: Legendary American athlete Jesse Owens equals or breaks four world records in 45 minutes at a Big Ten meet at Ferry Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan — remembered as “the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport”.
1937: The first airmail letter to circle the globe returns to New York.
1941: In the Ganges Delta region in India 5,000 drown in a storm.
1946: Abdullh I, ruler of Transjordan, proclaims himself king.
1953: The first noncommercial educational television station is established in Houston, Texas.
1959: The US Supreme Court rules Louisiana prohibiting blackwhite boxing is unconstitutional.
1964: The US Supreme Court rules closing schools to avoid desegregation is unconstitutional.
1965: Boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson weds Millie Bruce in Los Angeles. Muhammad Ali knocks out Sonny Liston at 2:12 of round 1 at Central Maine Civic Center, Lewiston, reatining his WBC/WBA heavyweight boxing title.
1969: Midnight Cowboy is released in theatres, and the drama — starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman — goes on to become the only X-rated film to win the Academy Award for best picture.
1977: George Lucas’s space opera film Star Wars (later known as Star Wars: Episode IV—NEW Hope) is released, launching one of the most successful and influential franchises in motion picture history.
1982: Ferguson Jenkins becomes the seventh pitcher to strike out 3,000 batters.
1983: The first US National Missing Children’s Day is proclaimed. A fire in Nassermeer, Egypt, kills 357.
1989: Chinese Premier Li Peng denies that troops surrounding Beijing are deployed to crush student protests.
1991: In a two-day airlift Israel brings 15,000 Ethiopian Jews from the besieged city of Addis Ababa to Israel.
1992: Jay Leno makes his debut as permanent host of NBC’S Tonight Show, succeeding Johnny Carson.
1998: Indonesia’s new president, B J Habibie, announces that elections will be held and begins releasing some political prisoners.
2006: US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair hold a White House news conference in which they acknowledge making costly mistakes in Iraq.
2011: The last episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show airs; the long-running TV programme helped make Winfrey one of the richest and most influential women in the United States.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Ralph Waldo Emerson, US writer (1803-1882); Padre Pio, Italian priest and saint (18871968); Igor Sikorsky, Russian aircraft designer, and developer of the helicopter (1889-1972); Beverly Sills, US opera singer (1929-2007); Ian Mckellen, English actor (1939- ); Frank Oz, British-born director/voice of Yoda and Miss Piggy (1944- ); Lincoln Barrington “Sugar” Minott, Jamaican reggae singer, producer, and sound system operator (19562010); Mike Myers, Canadian actor-comedian (1963- )