Today is the 63rd day of 2015. There are 302 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2004: The White House defends President George W Bush’s campaign commercials that show images from September 11, 2001. The ads anger several victims’ relatives and the International Association of Fire Fighters Union demands the ads be pulled.

OTHER EVENTS

1789: The Constitution of the United States goes into effect as the first Federal Congress meets in New York City.

1829: An unruly crowd mobs the White House during the inaugural reception for US President Andrew Jackson.

1933: The start of US President Franklin Roosevelt’s first administration has the first woman to serve in the Cabinet: Labour Secretary Frances Perkins.

1965: Syria orders nationalisation of nine oil companies, including affiliates of two US concerns.

1970: French submarine with 57 aboard is lost in Mediterranean Sea off the Riviera.

1972: Soviet Union signs agreement with Libya to jointly develop and refine Libyan oil, a pact seen as a pressure tactic against Western oil companies.

1977: Earthquake devastates Bucharest and other towns in Romania, where death toll eventually reaches more than 1,000.

1987: US President Ronald Reagan addresses the nation on the Iran-Contra affair, acknowledging his overtures to Iran had “deteriorated” into an arms-for-hostages deal.

1988: Sikh separatists slaughter dozens of Hindus at religious festival in Kari Sari, India.

1990: African National Congress loyalists overthrow the government of South African homeland of Ciskei.

1994: Four Muslim extremists are convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York.

1998: Flash floods in Pakistan kill at least 300 people, including dozens of schoolchildren trapped by raging waters. Another 1,500 people are missing and feared dead.

1999: The US Marine pilot whose plane clipped off a gondola cable in the Italian Alps, killing 20 people a year earlier, is acquitted by a US military court, causing dismay in Italy.

2005: Flags fly at half-staff as Canadians grapple with the deadliest attack on police officers in 120 years, after four Mounties were slain during a raid on a marijuana farm in a rural western hamlet.

2007: Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro sign a peace accord reuniting the country by dismantling a vast buffer zone that separated the two sides.

2009: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton swipes hard at Iran, accusing its hardline rulers of fomenting divisions in Arab countries and promoting terrorism.

2010: Turkey, a key Muslim ally of the United States, angrily withdraws its US ambassador after a congressional committee approves a resolution branding the World War I-era killing of Armenians a genocide.

2011: Vladimir Putin claims victory in Russia’s presidential election before tens of thousands of cheering supporters, even as the opposition and independent observers insist the vote has been marred by widespread fraud.

2013: Dozens of Syrian soldiers who had crossed into Iraq for refuge are ambushed in an attack that killed 48 of them and heightened concerns that the country could be drawn into Syria’s civil war.