Today is the 249th day of 2023. There are 116 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2005: Thousands of people demonstrate in Sao Paulo to protest against corruption, demanding harsh punishment for politicians caught up in a corruption scandal shaking the Administration of Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

OTHER EVENTS

1522: The first to circumnavigate the earth, Ferdinand Magellan’s Spanish expedition aboard the Vitoria returns to Spain without their captain.

1620: Pilgrims sail on the Mayflower from Plymouth, England, to settle in the New World.

1688: The Turks lose Belgrade to Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, whose forces subsequently occupy Bosnia, Serbia and Wallachia.

1901: President William McKinley is shot and mortally wounded by anarchist Leon Czolgos at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. (McKinley died eight days later and Czolgosz was executed on October 29.)

1909: American explorer Robert Peary sends a telegram from Indian Harbour, Labrador, announcing that he had reached the North Pole five months earlier.

1930: President Hipolito Yrigoyen of Argentina is toppled by a military coup.

1941: Jews over the age of six in Germany are forced to wear yellow stars of David.

1943: When a New York-bound Pennsylvania Railroad train derails and crashes in Philadelphia, 79 people are killed .

1944: During World War II the British Government relaxes blackout restrictions and suspends compulsory training for the Home Guard. The German V-2 missile, the precursor of modern ballistic missiles, is used for the first time, against Paris.

1965: India invades West Pakistan, (modern-day Pakistan) and bombs the city of Lahore.

1966: South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd is stabbed to death by a deranged page during a parliamentary session in Cape Town.

1968: The Kingdom of Swaziland gains independence from Britain.

1972: The Summer Olympics resume in Munich, West Germany, a day after the deadly hostage crisis that claimed the lives of 11 Israelis and five Arab abductors.

1975: Tennis star Martina Navratilova of Czechoslovakia, in New York for the US Open, requests political asylum in the United States at 18 years old. More than 2,300 people are killed by an earthquake in eastern Turkey.

1986: Two Arab terrorists kill 21 Jewish worshippers and themselves in an attack on a synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey.

1991: The Soviet Union recognises the independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

1992: Troops in South Africa fire on African National Congress supporters near the Transkei homeland, killing 28 and wounding 200.

1993: Six oil-producing Arab nations give crucial endorsement to the peace deal that would give Palestinians self-rule.

1997: Weeping masses gather in Calcutta, India, to pay homage to Mother Teresa, who had died the day before at age 87. A public funeral is held for Princess Diana at Westminster Abbey in London, six days after her death in a car crash in Paris.

1999: Indonesia imposes martial law in East Timor as thousands of people flee the province and pro-Indonesian militias continue a wave of terror.

2001: The first Air France Concorde plane in more than a year is cleared for commercial flights; the carrier’s fleet had been grounded after a Concorde crashed outside Paris in July 2000, killing 113 people.

2002: Meeting outside Washington, DC, for only the second time since 1800, Congress convenes in New York to pay homage to the victims and heroes of September 11. Russian authorities discover a mass grave in the Russian republic of Chechnya, near the border of Ingushetia; seven of the 15 dead are Chechen males who reportedly disappeared when Russian forces swept through their villages.

2003: Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas resigns after a prolonged power struggle with Palestinian President Yasir Arafat. Abbas blames Israel, Arafat and the Administration of US President George W Bush for undermining his Government and causing his peace efforts to fail.

2006: President George W Bush acknowledges for the first time that the Central Intelligence Agency was running secret prisons overseas and said tough interrogation had forced terrorist leaders to reveal plots to attack the United States and its allies.

2007: Italian operatic lyric tenor Luciano Pavarotti, considered one of the finest bel canto opera singers of the 20th century, dies at age 71.

2008: In the wake of Russia’s military stand-off with Georgia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says this is not the right time for the US to move forward on a once-celebrated deal for civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia (President George W Bush cancels the deal two days later.) More than 100 people die in a rockslide that crashes into a shantytown just outside Cairo, Egypt.

2009: Passengers leap into the dark sea and parents drop children into life rafts from a stricken ferry carrying nearly 1,000 people, after it capsized in the middle of the night in the southern Philippines, killing nine and leaving 30 missing.

2010: Huge posters plastered across the North Korean capital hail the nation’s biggest political convention in 30 years as a historic event.

2012 Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination for US president.

2017: Hurricane Irma, the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, pounds Puerto Rico with heavy rain and powerful winds; authorities say more than 900,000 people are left without power. A California parole panel recommends parole for Leslie Van Houten who, at 19, was the youngest of Charles Manson’s murderous followers in 1969. (California Governor Jerry Brown later blocked her release.) Two French companies, among the world’s biggest makers of luxury goods (including owners of brands like Dior and Gucci), agree to stop working with fashion models who are unhealthily thin.

2018: Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is stabbed at a campaign rally in Juiz de Fora, Brazil. India’s Supreme Court legalises gay sex, overturning a colonial law. New York and New Jersey state attorneys launch investigations into sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy, bring to six the number of states investigating.

2019: Zimbabwean politician Robert Mugabe — the long-time ruler of Zimbabwe as prime minister (1980–87) then as president (1987–2017) — dies at age 95.

2020: World number one tennis player Novak Djoković is sensationally disqualified in the fourth round of the US Open after hitting a ball in frustration and striking a line judge. A strain of bacteria nicknamed Conan the Bacterium survives three years attached to the International Space Station in open space.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Marie Joseph du Motier, French politician and soldier (1757-1834); Joseph P Kennedy, US businessman and ambassador to England (1888-1969); Louis Federico Leloir, Argentinian Noble-winning biochemist (1906-1987); Rosie Perez, US actress (1964- ); Roger Waters, English rock musician (1943- ); Prince Hisahito of Akishino, Japan’s imperial family’s first male heir since the 1960s (2006- ); Keith Gardner, former Jamaican Olympian (1929-2012); Richard Austin, Jamaican former cricketer (1954-2015)

— AP/ Jamaica Observer