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

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

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.

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.

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

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 Organization for Women is founded in the US.

1972: Palestinian guerrillas hijack German airliner and gain release of three people seized in massacre at Munich Olympics.

1987: Nicaraguan leaders indicate they remain committed to their refusal to discuss a ceasefire with leaders of the contra movement.

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

1991: Yugoslav warplanes bomb eastern Croatia as Serbia threatens to break off European Community peace talks.

1998: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission condemns apartheid as well as violence committed by the African National Congress.

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.

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

2008: A 6.4-magnitude earthquake in south-western 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.

2011: A Taliban suicide bomber rams a vehicle loaded with explosives into an armoured NATO bus on a busy thoroughfare in Kabul, killing 17 people, including a dozen Americans, in the deadliest strike against the US-led coalition in the Afghan capital since the war began.

2013: The US national intelligence director defends spying on foreign allies as necessary and said such scrutiny of America’s friends — and vice versa– is commonplace and in fact involved the help of European governments.

2014: Crews search for scorched wreckage along the state of Virginia’s Atlantic coast in hopes of finding why an unmanned commercial rocket exploded in a bow to NASA’s strategy of using private companies to fly supplies, and eventually, astronauts, to the International Space Station.

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