Today is the 62nd day of 2023. There are 303 days left in the year

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1999: An estimated 74 million US viewers watch former White House intern Monica Lewinsky confess the details of her affair with US President Bill Clinton.

OTHER EVENTS

1707: Mogul Emperor Aurangjeb dies in India and is succeeded by Bahadur.

1813: Britain signs Treaty of Stockholm with Sweden, which agrees to supply army in return for British subsidies and a promise not to oppose union with Norway.

1849: US Congress creates the Minnesota Territory; the Home Department, forerunner of the US Interior Department, is established.

1861: Emancipation of Russian serfs is proclaimed.

1875: The Georges Bizet opera Carmen premieres in Paris.

1878: Bulgaria is liberated from five centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule.

1896: Peace of Bucharest between Serbia and Bulgaria is signed.

1918: Russian Bolsheviks sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ceding territory with a quarter of its population to Germany and ending Russia’s participation in World War I.

1923: The first issue of the American weekly news magazine Time is published.

1931: The United States officially adopts the Star-Spangled Banner as the country’s national anthem.

1941: Bulgaria signs the Tripartite Pact and allows German troops to cross its territory. Although Bulgaria becomes an ally of Nazi Germany, Bulgarians oppose deportation of Jews and save them from Nazi death camps.

1974: Turkish Airlines DC-10 crashes shortly after take-off from Orly Airport in Paris, killing nearly 350 people.

1985: The first episode of the sitcom Moonlighting airs on American television; the series is a breakthrough for Bruce Willis, who played a wisecracking private investigator.

1986: Protestant militants go on car-burning rampage in central Belfast, Northern Ireland, to protest the Anglo-Irish accord.

1991: In a case that sparked a national outcry, black motorist Rodney King is severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers in a scene captured on amateur video.

1992: Police say they have recovered the bodies of 120 Azerbaijanis killed as they fled an Armenian assault in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.

1996: A bomb explodes aboard a bus in the heart of Jerusalem, killing 19 people, including the bomber.

1997: A passenger train derails in Pakistan’s Punjab province, killing at least 125 people and injuring more than 450.

2000: Former dictator General Augusto Pinochet returns to Chile a free man, 16 months after he was detained in Britain on torture charges.

2003: US officials announce the arrests of three members of Rwanda’s ethnic Hutu rebel movement for the 1999 murders of two American tourists in Uganda. The killers reportedly targeted English-speaking visitors to undermine US and British support for the new Rwandan Government.

2007: Pakistan successfully test-fires a short-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead two weeks ahead of peace talks with arch-rival, neighbouring India.

2009: The Vatican seeks to show that it is not opposed to science and evolutionary theory, hosting a conference on Charles Darwin and trying to debunk the idea it embraces creationism or intelligent design.

2011: Egypt’s military rulers appoint the first post-Hosni Mubarak prime minister, replacing an air force pilot close to the ousted leader in a bid to appease thousands of protesters who had threatened to renew the occupation of a central Cairo square.

2013: A car bomb explodes outside a mosque, killing 37 people and wounding another 141 in a Shiite Muslim neighbourhood in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, the third mass casualty attack on the minority sect this year.

2014: Russia tightens its grip on Crimea, a predominantly Russian-speaking region in Ukraine, while the US and European Union flounder for a solution.

2015: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands before Congress and bluntly warns the US that an emerging nuclear agreement with Iran “paves Iran’s path to the bomb”.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Thomas Otway, English dramatist (1652-1685); Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-American inventor of telephone (1847-1922); Jean Harlow, US actress (1911-1937); Jennifer Warnes, US singer (1947- ); Miranda Richardson, British actress (1958- ); Tone-Loc, US rapper/actor (1966- ); Jessica Biel, US actress (1982- ); Tommy McCook, saxophonist and founding member of The Skatalites (1927-1998)

AP