Today is the 302nd day of 2013. There are 63 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1929: The New York stock market collapses, marking “Black Tuesday,” and the Great Depression follows.

OTHER EVENTS

1618: Sir Walter Raleigh is executed in London, charged with treason against King James I.

1863: International Committee of the Red Cross is founded in Geneva.

1881: Japan’s first national political party is founded.

1888: The Suez Canal convention is signed in Constantinople.

1901: US President William McKinley’s assassin, Leon Czolgosz, is executed.

1918: Croatian parliament severs all ties with Austria-Hungary.

1923: Republic of Turkey is proclaimed.

1936: General Bakr Sidqi overthrows Iraqi government.

1942: Germans massacre 16,000 Jews in Pinsk, Russia.

1957: Fulgencio Batista suspends Cuba’s Constitution.

1962: United States lifts its naval quarantine of Cuba at the request of UN Secretary-General U Thant, who had flown to Havana for talks with Fidel Castro.

1966: The feminist National Organisation for Women is founded in the US.

1977: Fear of terrorism increases throughout western Europe due to kidnapping of Maurits Caransa, one of the wealthiest men in the Netherlands.

1990: Libya expels 145 members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a radical faction of the PLO, and closes four training bases used by the guerrilla group.

1992: Bosnia’s UN Ambassador says the Bosnian Muslim city of Jajce has fallen to the Serbs.

1993: Indian forces in Kashmir fire tear gas to stop hundreds of Muslims from marching toward a mosque where separatist rebels have been surrounded for two weeks.

1994: A man armed with an assault weapon sprays bullets at the White House.

1996: Thousands of paintings, sculptures, coins and other objects plundered by the Nazis from Jewish homes in Austria go on sale in a special auction to benefit needy Holocaust survivors.

1997: Seven Ukrainian soldiers serving in Bosnia as UN peacekeepers are arrested after they are caught unloading more than US$620,000 in cigarettes, whiskey, wine and cognac from two trucks in Mostar.

1998: John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth 36 years earlier, rides the space shuttle into orbit at age 77; South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission condemns apartheid as well as violence committed by the African National Congress.

1999: A man confesses to killing 140 Colombian children in a five-year spree, during which he lured his victims by posing as a beggar, a cripple and a monk.

2000: More than 30,000 people demonstrate in Dusseldorf, Germany, against neo-Nazis and draw praise from a Jewish leader who says the nation is increasingly standing up against rising hate crimes.

2005: French youth riot for a second straight night in a Paris suburb, torching cars and throwing rocks at police to protest the deaths of two youths who were electrocuted while trying to evade police.

2006: A Nigerian airliner crashes after taking off from the airport in Abuja, killing 96 passengers.

2008: A 6.4-magnitude earthquake in southwestern Pakistan kills at least 215 people.

2009: A US judge sentences an al-Qaeda sleeper agent to a relatively light eight years in prison because the man received what the judge calls “unacceptable” treatment in a US Navy prison.

2010: Authorities on three continents thwart multiple terrorist attacks aimed at the United States from Yemen, seizing two explosive packages addressed to Chicago-area synagogues and packed aboard cargo jets. The plot triggers worldwide fears that al-Qaeda was launching a major new terror campaign.TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Edmund Halley, English astronomer (1656-1742); James Boswell, Scottish lawyer-biographer (1740-1795); Joseph Goebbels, Nazi minister of propaganda (1897-1945); Frank Sedgman, Australian tennis champion (1927-); Richard Dreyfuss, US actor (1947-); Kate Jackson, US actress (1948-); Winona Ryder, US actress (1971-); Gabrielle Union, US actress (1973-).

— AP