Today is the 148th day of 2015 There are 217 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1934: The Dionne quintuplets, world’s first known surviving quintuplets, are born near Callander, Ontario.

OTHER EVENTS

1674: Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I declares war on France.

1863: The first black regiment from the North leaves Boston to fight in the American Civil War.

1864: Austria-Hungary’s Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian lands in Veracruz, Mexico, to become Emperor.

1919: Armenia declares its independence, breaking up the short-lived Transcaucasian Federal Republic. Armenia joins the Soviet Union in 1922.

1923: The US Attorney General determines it is legal for women to wear trousers.

1937: US President Franklin Roosevelt pushes a button in Washington signalling that vehicular traffic could cross the just-opened Golden Gate Bridge in California.

1961: Paris-Bucharest Orient Express train makes final trip after 78 years; human rights organisation Amnesty International is founded.

1971: Soviet Union launches spacecraft toward planet Mars, containing the first capsules to land on the planet.

1976: United States and Soviet Union sign treaty limiting size of underground nuclear explosions set off for peaceful purposes.

1984: US President Ronald Reagan leads a state funeral at Arlington National Cemetery for an unidentified American soldier killed in the Vietnam War.

1987: Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, lands a private plane in Moscow’s Red Square after evading Soviet air defences.

1992: To raise pressure on Haiti, the United States announces it will close the refugee camp at the naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, and bar ships that trade with Haiti from US ports.

1995: At least 1,500 people die in an earthquake that destroys a coastal village on Sakhalin Island in Russia’s Far East.

1998: Pakistan says it has matched India’s recent nuclear test with the detonation of five devices, then declares a state of emergency citing unspecified threats of “external aggression”.

2002: The Libyan Government offers to pay $2.7 billion to the families of 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in exchange for an end to U.S. and United Nations sanctions against Libya.

2006: Pope Benedict XVI visits the Auschwitz concentration camp as “a son of the German people” and asks God why he remained silent during the “unprecedented mass crimes” of the Holocaust.

2007: The United States and Iran break a 27-year diplomatic freeze with a four-hour meeting in Baghdad about Iraqi security.

2008: Lawmakers declare Nepal the world’s newest republic and bring to an end a centuries-old Hindu monarchy, giving the king two weeks to leave the royal compound.

2011: Egypt lifts a four-year-old blockade of the Gaza Strip, greatly easing travel restrictions on the 1.5 million residents of the Palestinian territory in a move that bolsters the Hamas government while dealing a setback to Israel’s attempts to isolate the militant group.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

William Pitt, English statesman (1759-1806); Edouard Benes, Czechoslovak statesman (1884-1948); Ian Fleming, British writer (1908-1964); Patrick White, Australian author (1912-1990); Carroll Baker, US actress (1931- ); Gladys Knight, US singer (1944- ); Jeff Fenech, Australian boxer (1964- ); Kylie Minogue, Australian singer (1968- )

–AP