Today is the 68th day of 2016. There are 298 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2012: One of the strongest solar storms in years engulfs Earth, but scientists say the planet may have lucked out because it struck in a direction that causes the least amount of damage.

OTHER EVENTS

1702: England’s Queen Anne ascends the throne upon the death of King William III.

1722: Afghanistan’s Mir Muhammad starts war against Persia.

1765: Britain’s House of Lords passes Stamp Act to tax American colonies.

1782: The Gnadenhutten massacre takes place as some 90 Indians are slain by militiamen in Ohio in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indians.

1865: A canal is begun in the Netherlands to connect Amsterdam with the North Sea.

1898: United States refuses to support Britain in its conflict with Russia over a loan to China.

1904: Germany revises 1872 anti-Jesuit law to permit return of some members of the Roman Catholic order.

1917: Riots and strikes break out in St Petersburg, marking start of Russian Revolution.

1942: Japanese forces capture Rangoon, Burma, during World War II.

1949: France recognises non-communist Vietnam under Bao Dai as independent state within French Union.

1950: Marshal Voroshilov announces the existence of the Soviet atomic bomb.

1954: United States and Japan sign mutual defence agreement.

1957: Ghana is admitted to the United Nations.

1965: United States lands 3,500 marines in South Vietnam.

1986: Guerrilla violence in Colombia takes seven lives a day before national elections.

1987: Sri Lankan troops launch large new offensive, killing 11 separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in northern Jaffna peninsula.

1989: Chinese troops converge on Tibetan capital of Lhasa to enforce martial law following three days of anti-Chinese rioting.

1993: South Korea’s President Kim Young-sam fires two key generals in a move to seize civilian control of the army and open the path to reform.

1995: Gunmen fire on a van carrying American employees to the US consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killing two and wounding one.

1996: China fires three ballistic missiles into waters off Taiwan’s main ports, two weeks before the island’s first presidential elections.

1999: The US Energy Department fires a Taiwanese-born scientist suspected of handing over nuclear missile technology to China in the 1980s.

2003: An Argentine court releases an indictment ordering the arrest of four former Iranian government officials for their alleged role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people were killed.

2005: The UN war crimes court indicts Kosovo’s prime minister for alleged atrocities while commanding ethnic Albanian insurgents against Serb forces in the struggle for control of the province.

2009: Roman Catholic and Protestant congregations pray together for peace after Irish Republican Army dissidents kill two British soldiers — the first deadly attack on Northern Ireland security forces in 12 years.

2013: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is lauded as a modern-day reincarnation of Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar and a disciple of Cuba’s Fidel Castro at a fiery, foot-stomping state funeral that at times smacks of a political rally.

2015: The co-owners of an Irish setter feared poisoned at Britain’s leading dog show are devastated by his death but they do not believe that one of the other competitors is responsible.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Richard Howe, English admiral (1726-1799); Oliver Wendell Holmes, US jurist (1809-1894); Juana de Ibarbourou, Uruguayan poet (1895-1979); Cyd Charisse, US actress dancer (1923-2008); Lynn Redgrave, British actress (1943-2010); Aidan Quinn, US actor (1959- ); Camryn Manheim, US actress (1961- )

— AP