Highlights in history on this date:

1811 - Venezuela becomes first South American country to declare its independence from Spain.

1932 - Right-wing politician Antonio de Oliveira Salazar becomes Portugal's prime minister. He soon creates an authoritarian political order that lasts until 1974.

1988 - Iran's president says the country has the "right to avenge" the airliner shot down by a U.S. warship.

1999 - Caribbean leaders gather for a summit in Trinidad to discuss issues such as the sugar and banana trade, and the development of a regional supreme court.

2000 - The U.N. Security Council imposes an 18-month diamond ban on Sierra Leone's rebels in a bid to strangle their ability to finance a civil war.

2001- Former Argentine President Carlos Menem is indicted by a federal judge for heading up an "illicit organization" that sold rifles and artillery to Croatia in 1991 and Ecuador in 1995 in violation of U.N. embargoes.

2004 - The prosecutor for a U.N.-sponsored war crimes court opens the first trials for rebel military commanders accused in a vicious 10-year campaign for control of diamond-rich Sierra Leone.

2006 - NATO calls for a firm international response to North Korea's missile tests, which the military alliance condemns as a threat to security in Asia and the wider world.

2009 Honduras' exiled president flies toward home in a Venezuelan jet in a high-stakes attempt to return to power, even as the interim government orders the military to turn away the plane.

Today's Birthdays:

Sir Stamford Raffles, British founder of Singapore (1781-1826); Phineas Taylor Barnum, U.S. circus pioneer (1810-1891); Cecil Rhodes, English statesman and Central Africa pioneer (1853-1902); Jean Cocteau, French author-film maker (1889-1963); George Pompidou, French prime minister and president (1911-1974); Huey Lewis, U.S. singer (1951--); Edie Falco, actress (1963--).