Today is the 202nd day of 2012. There are 164 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight

1969: US astronauts Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Neil A Armstrong take the first-ever walk on the moon.

Other Events

1810: Bogota rises against Spanish rule. The day is now Independence Day in Colombia.

1811: The Rev Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a hero of independence, is executed by firing squad in Chihuahua, Mexico.

1871: British Columbia enters Confederation as a Canadian province.

1913: Turkey recaptures Adrianople from Bulgaria.

1922: League of Nations Council approves mandates for Togoland, Cameroons and Tanganyika.

1945: The US flag is raised over Berlin as US troops prepare to take part in the occupation government after World War II.

1951: Jordan's King Abdullah is assassinated in Jerusalem by a Palestinian nationalist after Jordan annexed West Bank territory.

1958: United Arab Republic severs relations with Jordan.

1974: Turkey invades Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

1987: Prime Minister Anibal Cavalco Silva's centre-right Social Democrats win Portugal's first parliamentary majority.

1988: South Africa, Angola and Cuba formally accept agreement on withdrawal of foreign troops from Angola and independence for South-West Africa — now Namibia.

1989: Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is placed under house arrest.

1991: Russian Federation President Boris N Yeltsin bans political activity in Russian government offices and republic-run businesses.

1992: Vaclav Havel, the playwright who led the Velvet Revolution against communism, steps down as Czechoslovakia's president after failing to halt the country's disintegration.

1996: Hutu rebels attack Tutsi refugees at a camp in Burundi, killing some 320 people, mostly women and children.

1999: Israel's new prime minister, Ehud Barak, tells Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat he intends to withdraw promptly from a portion of the West Bank while pursuing an overall Middle East settlement.

2001: German leaders honour the officers who tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler 57 years ago, laying wreaths on the anniversary of the failed attack.

2005: Hurricane Emily slams into northeastern Mexico, knocking out power and forcing thousands to flee small fishing villages after leaving hundreds homeless and destroying luxury hotels in the Yucatan Peninsula.

2007: The Pakistani Supreme Court rules that President Pervez Musharraf had no authority to suspend Pakistan's top judge and orders Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry reinstated.

2009: A UN war crimes court convicts two Bosnian Serb cousins for a 1992 killing spree that included locking scores of Muslims in two houses and burning them alive.

2011: Prime Minister David Cameron drags his political foes into Britain's phone-hacking scandal at a raucous session of Parliament, distancing himself from a former aide at the heart of the allegations and denying his staff tried to thwart police investigations.

Today's Birthdays

Francesco Petrarca, Italian poet (1304-1374); Alberto Santos-Dumont, Brazilian aviator (1872-1932); Theda Bara, US silent-film actress (1885-1955); Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Hungarian artist (1895-1946); Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer (1919-2008); Diana Rigg, English actress (1938-); Kim Carnes, US singer (1945-); Carlos Santana, Mexican guitarist (1947-); Judy Greer, actress (1975-); Stone Gossard, US musician (1966-).

—AP