Highlights in history on this date:
1492 - Christopher Columbus sets sail from Palos, Spain, looking for a route to India across the Atlantic, encountering the New World instead.
1571 - The Ottomans massacre inhabitants of Famagusta, Cyprus, after an 11-month siege.
1589 - Henry of Navarre, first of the Bourbon line, succeeds the assassinated Henry III as king of France.
1645 - Denmark loses much land to Sweden at peace of Broemsebro.
1675 - French defeat Dutch and Spanish fleets in Bay of Palermo and take Sicily.
1742 - British Navy guarding Mediterranean prevents Neapolitans and Spaniards from taking Lombardy.
1803 - British offensive begins Second Mahratha War against Sindhia of Gwalliori in Central India.
1914 - Germany declares war on France at the start of World War I.
1943 - Anti-Nazi demonstrations are held in Milan, Genoa and other northern Italian cities during World War II.
1948 - Whittaker Chambers, a confessed Communist, accuses former U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss of being a Communist agent. Hiss is convicted of perjury.
1956 - Gold Coast League Assembly adopts Kwame Nkrumah's resolution demanding independence from Britain.
1958 - Atomic-powered U.S. submarine Nautilus makes its first undersea crossing of North Pole.
1961- Two U.S. airliners are hijacked: a French Algerian gunman seizes a plane from Mexico City, forcing the pilot to land in Cuba. An American ex-convict and his 16-year-old son attempt to hijack a Phoenix plane to Cuba, but are thwarted by the pilot.
1969 - Israeli government leaders announces it will retain the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and a major part of the eastern and southern Sinai Peninsula _ the areas captured from the Arabs in the June 1967 war.
1974 - The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) declare a de facto cease-fire between rebel and Portuguese troops.
1978 - Israeli planes strike a Palestinian guerrilla base in Lebanon after a terrorist bomb kills one person and injures 50 in a Tel Aviv market earlier in the day.
1988 - Hard-line leader Sein Lwin clamps indefinite martial law on the capital of Myanmar.
1990 - The United States and the Soviet Union jointly condemn Iraq's invasion of Kuwait while Iraqi troops begin massing along Kuwaiti border with Saudi Arabia.
1991 - Russian branch formally breaks off from the Soviet Union's Communist Party to form a new party led by reform-minded Communists.
1993 - The United Nations begins its withdrawal of 20,000 peacekeepers in Cambodia.
1995 - Delegates from some 100 nations agree at the United Nations on a global treaty to prevent overfishing on the high seas.
1997 - Political moderate Mohammad Khatami takes over as president of Iran.
1998 - Kashmiri guerrillas kill 34 construction workers in northern India.
1999 - The U.S. Justice Department rules that the government must pay the heirs of Abraham Zapruder US$16 million for his film of President John F. Kennedy's assassination.
2000 - The European Union opens an antitrust case against Microsoft.
2001 - The International Monetary Fund announces it will loan US$1.2 billion loan to Argentina and extend US$15 billion line of credit to Brazil.
2002 - Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian calls for legislation that would allow a referendum to be conducted on whether to declare independence from China.
2003 - The United Arab Emirates-based Al Arabiya satellite television network broadcasts an audiotape warning allegedly from Ayman al-Zawahiri, a top deputy of Al Qaida, that the U.S. will pay a "dear price" if it harmed any prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
2004 - A breathtaking sweep in Pakistan against al-Qaida's vast web of operations widens, with seven more arrests made.
2005 - French authorities find 351 fetuses and stillborn babies stored in bags and jars at a Paris hospital.
2006 - Hundreds of thousands of people are evacuated as Typhoon Prapiroon slams into southern China, pounding an already battered area with more heavy rains and winds.
2007 - A 94-year-old great-great-grandmother, Phyllis Turner, who left school at the age of 12 becomes the world's oldest recipient of a master's degree from University of Adelaide in Australia.
2008 _ At least 145 people are killed in a stampede of pilgrims at a remote Hindu temple in India.
2009 _ Huge crowds reminiscent of the 1986 "people power" demonstration take to Manila's streets to honor the passing of former President Corazon Aquino, who captured the hearts of Filipinos by ousting a brutal dictator and keeping democracy alive in the Philippines.
2010 - BP embarks on an operation that could seal the biggest offshore oil leak in U.S. history once and for all, forcing mud down the throat of its blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico in a tactic known variously as "bullheading" or a "static kill."
Today's Birthdays:
James Wyatt, English architect (1746-1813); Koshaku Yamagata Aritomo, first prime minister of Japan (1838-1922); Dolores del Rio, U.S.-Mexican film star (1905-1983); Phyllis Dorothy (P.D.) James, British mystery writer (1920--); Tony Bennett, U.S. singer (1926--); Martin Sheen, U.S. actor (1940--); Martha Stewart, U.S. lifestyle guru (1941--).
Thought For Today:
We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full _ Marcel Proust, French author (1871-1922).
This feature is only a sample of the full "Today in History," Copyright 2011 the Associated Press
You are invited to see the entire story at http://www.taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_content.php?id=1664057
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