This is the 151st day of 2023. There are 214 days left in 2023.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2012: Egypt formally ends its 31-year state of emergency.

OTHER EVENTS

1043: Lady Godiva rides naked through the market square in Coventry, England, in acceptance of her exasperated husband Leofric’s requirement as to what it would take for him to lessen the people’s tax burden, a request Godiva was persistently making of him at that time.

1790: President George Washington signs into law the first US Copyright Act.

1859: The Big Ben clock tower in London goes into operation, chiming for the first time.

1884: Dr John Harvey Kellogg applies for a patent for flaked cereal.

1889: More than 2,000 people perish when a dam break sends water rushing through Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

1902: The Peace of Vereeniging ends the Boer War in which British casualties numbered 5,774 killed and 16,000 deaths from disease, against 4,000 Boers killed in action.

1911: General Porfirio Diaz goes into exile in France, ending 34 years as the strongman president of Mexico.

1941: Tobacco Road, a play about an impoverished Southern family based on the novel by Erskine Caldwell, closes on Broadway after a run of 3,182 performances.

1961: South Africa becomes an independent republic as it withdraws from the British Commonwealth.

1962: Former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann is hanged in Israel a few minutes before midnight for his role in the Holocaust.

1966: A court in the Congo sentences former Premier Evariste Kimba and three others to death on charges of plotting to overthrow President Joseph Mobutu.

1970: An earthquake hits Peru, leaving more than 66,000 dead, 20,000 missing, and 200,000 injured.

1973: The US Senate votes to cut off all funds for US bombing operations in Cambodia.

1976: The Who sets the record for the loudest concert of all time, 120 decibels at 50 metres, at The Valley in Charlton, London, England.

1977: The trans-Alaska oil pipeline, three years in the making, is completed.

1985: At least 88 people are killed and more than 1,000 injured as over 40 tornadoes sweep through parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and Ontario, Canada, during an eight-hour period.

1994: The United States announces it is no longer aiming long-range nuclear missiles at targets in the former Soviet Union.

1996: An ethnic Croat who fought in the Bosnian Serb forces becomes the first person to be convicted by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands; he is later sentenced to 10 years in prison for his part in the execution of Muslims in Srebrenica.

2000: Hong Kong closes its last Vietnamese refugee camp, leaving about 100 people homeless.

2003: Chinese diplomats carry 18 Tibetan refugees back across the border from Katmandu, Nepal’s capital, in the first forced repatriation in over 10 years. President George W Bush visits the site of the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.

2004: A bomb rips through a Shiite Muslim mosque in Karachi, Pakistan, killing 16 people and wounding 38 others.

2005: A year-long trial spurring accusations it was linked to Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s opposition to President Vladimir Putin ends with the fallen oil tycoon sentenced to nine years in prison, ending the biggest case in post-Soviet Russia. It is publicly revealed that former FBI official Mark Felt is “Deep Throat,”, the anonymous informant at the centre of the Watergate scandal that involved US President Richard Nixon’s Administration.

2007: About 1,000 diehard supporters of Thailand’s ousted prime minister demonstrate against a stunning court ruling on May 30 that banned his party and barred its entire leadership from politics for five years.

2008: Jamaica’s Usain Bolt breaks the world record in the 100m sprint with a wind-legal (+1.7m/s) 9.72 seconds at the Reebok Grand Prix in New York, USA — his frst world record in the event.

2009: The world’s most powerful laser, created to help keep tabs on the US nuclear weapons stockpile while also studying the heavens, is unveiled.

2010: Israeli commandos rappel down to an aid flotilla sailing to thwart a Gaza blockade, clashing with pro-Palestinian activists on the lead ship in a botched raid that leaves at least nine passengers dead.

2014: Psy’s Gangnam Style becomes the first video to reach two billion views on YouTube.

2015: Harriette Thompson, aged 92 and 65 days, becomes the oldest woman to complete a marathon, the Suja Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon in San Diego.

2018: The Danish Government bans garments that cover the face, including the niqab and burqa. Uganda’s Parliament imposes a tax on social media to stop gossip.

2019: A disgruntled employee shoots and kills 12 people at a US municipal building in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

2021: Naomi Osaka pulls out of the French Open, citing her mental health, after refusing to appear at compulsory post-match press conferences. China’s ruling Communist Party announces it will allow married couples to have three children, in an effort to boost falling birthrates. Tulsa, Oklahoma, marks the 100-year anniversary of the massacre of hundreds of black residents by a white mob in the Greenwood neighbourhood.

2022: A lost 3,400 year-old Bronze Age city is unearthed on the Tigris river, Iraq, due to drought; it was likely part of the Mittani Empire.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Rainier III, prince of Monaco (1923-2005); Clint Eastwood, US actor-director (1930- ); John Bonham, English drummer (1948-1980); DMC, American rapper (1964- ); Brooke Shields, US actress (1965- ); Colin Farrell, Irish actor (1976- )

– AP/ Jamaica Observer