Today is the 78th day of 2015. There are 287 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

OTHER EVENTS

1799: Napoleon Bonaparte begins siege of Acre — now Akko, Israel — which was defended by Turks.

1812: Spanish Cortes passes liberal constitution under a hereditary monarch.

1861: Maori War in New Zealand ends.

1920: The US Senate rejects for the second time the United States’ involvement in the League of Nations by a vote of 49-35, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed for approval.

1932: Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia officially opens.

1933: Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini proposes a pact with Britain, France and Germany.

1944: Nazi German soldiers occupy Hungary.

1962: Relative calm returns to Algeria after ceasefire, ending seven years of warfare between French and Algerian nationalists.

1963: Algeria demands that France negotiate on ending nuclear testing in Algerian Sahara.

1970: Heads of government of West and East Germany, Willy Brandt and Willi Stoph, meet for the first time in Erfurt.

1971: At least 160 people perish in landslides north of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

1977: The president of the Republic of Congo, Marien Ngouabi, is assassinated at his official residence in Brazzaville.

1979: US House of Representatives begins televising its day-to-day business.

1987: US television evangelist Jim Bakker resigns as chairman of his PTL ministry organization amid a sex-and-money scandal involving Jessica Hahn, a former church secretary.

1988: Two British soldiers are shot to death after they were dragged from a car and beaten by mourners attending an Irish Republican Army funeral in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

1989: Muslim gunners fire rockets into Christian areas of Lebanon.

1990: Latvia’s political opposition claims victory in the republic’s first free elections in 50 years.

1993: Georgia shoots down a Russian warplane over the separatist Abkhazia region, killing its pilot and heightening tensions between the two countries.

1994: Cambodian Government seizes control of Pailin, the Khmer Rouge’s main stronghold.

1996: A discotheque fire kills at least 150 people in Manila, Philippines.

1997: Police fire tear gas and warning shots in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, to quell a protest against the government’s plan to use foreign mercenaries to crush a separatist rebellion.

1998: Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic agrees to international demands to pull back special police from the troubled province of Kosovo.

1999: A bomb shatters a packed outdoor food market in southern Russia, killing at least 56 people.

2000: A mob storms the Nationalist Party’s headquarters in Taiwan, forcing Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui to quit as party leader, after a humiliating election defeat.

2003: The US launches an attack against Iraq after a deadline for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to go into exile expires.

2005: Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters demonstrate across Europe to mark the second anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, with 45,000 marching from London’s Hyde Park past the American Embassy.

2010: Yemen’s president declares the country’s six-year war with northern rebels over, saying the Shiite militants are honoring a cease-fire agreement signed a month ago.

2011: The US fires more than 100 cruise missiles from the sea while French fighter jets target Moammar Gadhafi’s forces from the air, launching the broadest international military effort since the Iraq war in support of an uprising that had seemed on the verge of defeat.

2013: Iraqi insurgents send a bloody message on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion, carrying out a wave of bombings across the country that killed at least 65 people in the deadliest day in Iraq this year.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

David Livingstone, British explorer-missionary (1813-1873); Sergei Diaghilev, Russian choreographer (1872-1929); Max Reger, German composer (1873-1916); Paul Atkinson, US guitarist/music producer (1947-2004); Ursula Andress, Swiss-born actress (1936- ); Glenn Close, US actress (1947- ); Bruce Willis, German-born US actor (1955- ); Harvey Weinstein, US film producer (1952- )

–AP

CAP:

Jim Bakker