Today is the 62nd day of 2025. There are 303 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2020: The last Ebola patient is discharged from hospital in Beni, Democtratic Republic of Congo, raising hopes the outbreak is now at an end in the country after 2,300 deaths.

OTHER EVENTS

1857: In the Second Opium War, France and the United Kingdom declare war on China.

1887: Anne Sullivan begins teaching six-year-old blind-deaf Helen Keller.

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

1931: Cab Calloway records Minnie the Moocher
, jazz’s first million seller.

1934: American bank robber John Dillinger makes a daring escape from prison at Crown Point, Indiana.

1939: Mahatma Gandhi begins a fast in Mumbai, Bombay, to protest against autocratic rule in India.

1951: Bill Mikvy of Temple University scores an NCAA basketball record 73 points — including 54 straight — in a 93-69 win on the road at Wilkes College.

1952: The Puerto Rican people overwhelmingly ratify a constitution giving them self-government under US control.

1956: Heartbreak Hotel becomes Elvis Presley’s first hit on Billboard’s top 10.

1971: South African Broadcasting Corporation lifts its ban on the Beatles that began after John Lennon’s infamous “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink… We’re more popular than Jesus now…” quote in 1966.

1975: Linda McCartney is charged in the US with possession of marijuana.

1978: Barbadian cricketer Desmond Haynes plays his first day of Test cricket in a West Indies versus Australia match.

1985: Bill Shoemaker becomes the first jockey to win US$100 million.

1987: Ray Dandridge, third baseman in the Negro Leagues, is elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

1991: Following a high-speed car chase, Los Angeles police officers brutally beat Rodney King, an African American motorist; despite amateur videotape of the beating the policemen are acquitted in 1992, causing large-scale rioting in the city.

1998: In Baluchistan, Pakistan, flash floods claim the lives of 300 persons; 1,500 are missing and presumed dead while some 25,000 are left homeless.

1999: The Fortunate single by soul singer Maxwell is released; it wins Billboard Music Award Best R&B Single of the Year for that year.

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.

2005: American adventurer Steve Fossett becomes the first person to complete a solo, non-stop, circumnavigation of the globe — without refuelling — when he lands in Kansas after more than 67 hours in flight.

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.

2008: Ecuador breaks off diplomatic relations with Colombia in response to the raid Colombia made against Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas in Ecuador.

2009: The Sri Lankan cricket team is attacked by terrorists while on their way to Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore, for the second Test against Pakistan; the match is abandoned as a result.

2012: American conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie — who contributed to a number of classic movies, notably helping to create the appearance of Darth Vader in the Star Wars series — dies in Berkeley, California.

2018: English neurologist Roger Bannister, the first athlete to run a mile in less than four minutes, dies at age 88.

2019: South African music star Mampintsha is shown hitting his girlfriend Babes Wodumo on Instagram Live and is later arrested for assault.

2020: UK has its wettest February since records began in 1862, according to the met office; the measurement is 209.1mm of rainfall — 237 per cent above average.

2021: Sarah Everard is kidnapped, raped and murdered by a UK policeman after being arrested under false pretenses in London. Australian Attorney General Christian Porter denies a rape allegation from 1998 involving a 16-year-old girl.

2022: Russian forces seize the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the largest in Europe.

2024: Violence increases further in ungoverned areas of Burkina Faso as around 170 people are executed by armed groups in three northern villages.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Georg Cantor, German mathematician (1845-1918); Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-born American scientist and inventor of the telephone and refinement of the phonograph (1847-1922); Jamsetji Tata, Indian industrialist (1839-1904); Tommy McCook, Jamaican saxophonist and founding member of The Skatalites (1927-1998); Donat “Jackie” Mittoo, the original “beat master” and founding member of The Skatalites (1948-1990); Jackie Joyner-Kersee, American athlete, heptathlon champion (1962- )