Today is the 171st day of 2023. There are 194 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1965: Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr delivers the 1965 valedictory service sermon in the Assembly Hall of The University of the West Indies, Mona campus.

OTHER EVENTS

1756: Scores of British prisoners (146, by British accounts) are shut in a cell, known as the Black Hole of Calcutta, by the nawab of Bengal; only 21 escape suffocation during the night.

1837: The Natal Republic is founded by Dutch settlers in southern Africa and a constitution is proclaimed.

1893: A jury in New Bedford, Massachusetts, finds Lizzie Borden not guilty of the axe murders of her father and stepmother.

1966: The Beatles’ “butcher cover” album becomes a collector’s item when Yesterday and Today is initially released by Capitol Records featuring the Fab Four notoriously dressed in butcher smocks while posing with chunks of meat and parts of dismembered dolls; Capitol recalls the albums following public outcry and a more conventional group portrait is substituted.

1967: Boxer Muhammad Ali is convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted; Ali’s conviction is ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court.

1973: Juan Peron returns to Argentina after an 18-year exile.

1988: The US Supreme Court unanimously upholds a New York City law making it illegal for private clubs with more than 400 members to exclude women and minorities.

1991: P V Narasimha Rao becomes India’s ninth prime minister since it became independent in 1947; he commences reforms that begin to open India’s closed and socialist economy.

1992: Czech leader Vaclav Klaus and Slovak leader Vladimir Meciar agree to split Czechoslovakia in two.

1994: US athlete O J Simpson pleads innocent to murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown-Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.

1996: Russian President Boris Yeltsin fires three of the most powerful members of his Administration amid charges they want to cancel presidential elections and use force to retain their positions and power.

1999: While in Germany for a summit, Russian President Boris Yeltsin presents US President Bill Clinton with declassified Russian reports relating to the assassination of President John F Kennedy.

2000: A French court dismisses criminal charges against former German doctor Hans Muench who worked at the Auschwitz death camp, ruling that at age 89 he was too old for a trial on inciting racial hatred.

2001: Houston resident Andrea Yates drowns her five children in the family bathtub then calls the police; Yates is later convicted of murder but has her conviction overturned when she is acquitted in a retrial by reason of insanity.

2002: The US shuts down its embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, after a terrorist threat; 219 people were killed and more than 5,000 others injured in August 1998 when a bomb destroyed the original structure.

2006: Former Liberian President Charles Taylor’s UN-chartered plane arrives in the Netherlands for a war crimes trial on charges accusing him in the death, rape or mutilation of hundreds of thousands of people in West Africa. The US military recovers the booby-trapped bodies of two missing soldiers in Iraq.

2008: Model Naomi Campbell is sentenced in London to 200 hours of community service and fined £2,300 (US$4,600) after she pleads guilty to kicking, spitting, and swearing at two police officers during an argument over lost luggage while aboard a plane at Heathrow Airport.

2009: Thousands of protesters defy Iran’s highest authority and march on waiting security forces that fight back with batons and tear gas, in a deepening crisis over a disputed presidential election.

2010: Israel pledges it will immediately allow all goods into Gaza, except weapons and items deemed to have a military use, under its decision to ease its three-year-old blockade of the Palestinian territory.

2011: The erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey is published by Vintage Books.

2013: In a telephone interview with The Associated Press the Taliban proposes a deal in which they will free US Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, held since 2009, in exchange for five of their most senior operatives at Guantanamo Bay; the exchange takes place with Bergdahl being handed over on May 31, 2014. The Food and Drug Administration approves unrestricted sales of the morning-after pill, lifting all age limits on the emergency contraceptive.

2014: General Prayuth Chan-ocha, the head of Thailand’s army, announces the imposition of martial law in a televised address.

2016: Rome elects its youngest (at 37) and first female mayor, Virginia Raggi.

2017: Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick resigns under pressure from investors and Uber’s board after a shareholder revolt.

2018: Algeria turns off its Internet to stop students cheating during exams. The Hungarian Government passes legislation that criminalises aiding undocumented migrants.

2019: Chinese President Xi Jinping meets Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang, the first Chinese president to visit North Korea in 14 years.

2020: The highest-ever temperature is recorded in the Arctic circle at 38C (100F) in Verkhoyansk, Siberia.

2021: Brazil’s COVID-19 death toll passes 500,000, the second highest in the world.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Jacques Offenbach, German composer (1819-1880); Errol Flynn, Australian actor (1909-1959); Olympia Dukakis, American actress (1931-2021 ); John Mahoney, UK actor (1940-2018); Anne Murray, Canadian singer (1945- ); Lionel Richie, American songwriter, record producer, television personality, R&B singer (1949- ); Nicole Kidman, Hawaiian actress (1967- ); Maria Lark, Russian actress (1997- )

— AP/ Jamaica Observer