Today is the 62nd day of 2015. There are 303 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1991: In a case that sparked a national outcry, black motorist Rodney King is severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers in a scene captured on amateur video.

OTHER EVENTS

1707: Mogul Emperor Aurangjeb dies in India and is succeeded by Bahadur.

1813: Britain signs Treaty of Stockholm with Sweden, which agrees to supply army in return for British subsidies and a promise not to oppose union with Norway.

1861: Emancipation of Russian serfs is proclaimed.

1878: Bulgaria is liberated from five centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule.

1918: Russian Bolsheviks sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ceding territory with a quarter of its population to Germany and ending Russia’s participation in World War I.

1931: The United States officially adopts the Star-Spangled Banner as the country’s national anthem.

1941: Bulgaria signs the Tripartite Pact and allows German troops to cross its territory. Although Bulgaria becomes an ally of Nazi Germany, Bulgarians oppose deportation of Jews and save them from Nazi death camps.

1974: Turkish Airlines DC-10 crashes shortly after takeoff from Orly Airport in Paris, killing nearly 350 people.

1976: US Government under President Gerald Ford discloses that it has decided to sell weapons to Egypt.

1986: Protestant militants go on car-burning rampage in central Belfast, Northern Ireland, to protest the Anglo-Irish accord.

1988: Political clashes leave 11 people dead and more than 300 injured in Bangladesh as accusations of vote fraud mar parliamentary elections.

1992: Police say they have recovered the bodies of 120 Azerbaijanis killed as they fled an Armenian assault in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.

1995: The former president of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, goes on a hunger strike to force the government to take back what he describes as slander against him. He suspends the strike a few hours later.

1997: A passenger train derails in Pakistan’s Punjab province, killing at least 125 people and injuring more than 450.

1998: A nationwide strike shuts down most of Zimbabwe’s economy, and the government threatens to punish those who encouraged the protest.

1999: An estimated 74 million U.S. viewers watch former White House intern Monica Lewinsky confess the details of her affair with US President Bill Clinton.

2000: Former dictator General Augusto Pinochet returns to Chile a free man, 16 months after he was detained in Britain on torture charges.

2004: Angered by the way President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced to flee his country, the 15-nation Caribbean Community says it will not provide troops for the UN peacekeeping force to Haiti. Aristide claimed he was abducted at gunpoint by U.S. Marines and sent into exile in South Africa.

2006: Anti-US protests erupt in several Pakistani cities, with crowds burning American flags and chanting “Death to Bush” hours before the US president arrives.

2007: Pakistan successfully test-fires a short-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead two weeks ahead of peace talks with archrival neighbouring India.

2009: The Vatican seeks to show that it is not opposed to science and evolutionary theory, hosting a conference on Charles Darwin and trying to debunk the idea it embraces creationism or intelligent design.

2011: Egypt’s military rulers appoint the first post-Hosni Mubarak prime minister, replacing an air force pilot close to the ousted leader in a bid to appease thousands of protesters who had threatened to renew the occupation of a central Cairo square.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Thomas Otway, English dramatist (1652-1685); Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-American inventor of telephone (1847-1922); Jean Harlow, US actress (1911-1937); Jennifer Warnes, US singer (1947- ); Miranda Richardson, British actress (1958- ); Tone-Loc, US rapper/actor (1966- ); Jessica Biel, US actress (1982- )

–AP

CAP:

An image of the late Rodney King, three days after his videotaped beating in Los Angeles in 1991.