Highlights in history on this date:

1590 - The Duke of Parma, advancing from the Netherlands, forces France's King Henry IV to lift the siege of Paris in Catholic League War.

1658 - Dutch take Jaffnapatam, last Portuguese possession in Ceylon, the modern-day Sri Lanka.

1698 - New East India Company is granted charter by King William III of England; Peter the Great executes the Streltzy rebels in Russia and imposes tax on beards.

1793 - The revolutionary government in France starts the 10-month Reign of Terror, during which 17,000 people are executed.

1860 - Britain, Austria, France, Prussia, Russia and Turkey sign treaty to restore order in Syria after massacre of Christians by Druse.

1864 - Combined British, French and Dutch fleets attack Japan in Shimonoseko Straits in reprisal for closing ports and expelling foreigners.

1905 - Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in New Hampshire, ends Russo-Japanese War.

1958 - The novel "Doctor Zhivago" by Russian author Boris Pasternak is published in the United States for the first time.

1966 - Chinese news agency claims U.S. planes sunk a Communist Chinese merchant ship and damaged another in the Gulf of Tonkin, killing nine Chinese seamen and wounding seven.

1972 - Eleven Israeli Olympic athletes, four Palestinian guerrillas and a West German policeman are killed in a gun battle at Munich airport.

1975 - U.S. President Gerald Ford escapes an attempt on his life by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a disciple of Charles Manson, in Sacramento, California.

1981 - Iran's revolutionary prosecutor general, Hojatolislam Ali Qoddousi, is the fourth major Iranian official in a week to die in a bomb blast.

1986 - Four gunmen holding hijacked Pan Am jet in Pakistan open fire on passengers, killing 20 and wounding more than 100.

1987 - Israeli jets blast Palestinian guerrilla bases near Sidon, Lebanon, killing 41 people and wounding 60.

1989 - Hundreds of thousands of blacks begin two-day strike in South Africa on eve of segregated elections.

1991 - Soviet lawmakers approve creation of interim government to usher in new confederation of sovereign states.

1993 - Seven Nigerian U.N. peacekeepers are killed in an ambush by Somalis in Mogadishu.

1995 - American neo-Nazi Gary Lauck is extradited to Germany from Denmark to stand trial on charges of inciting racial hatred and other counts.

1996 - Ramzi Yousef, a Muslim extremist who allegedly masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is convicted with two other men of planning to blow up a dozen U.S. commercial airliners.

1997 - Responding to a triple suicide bombing in Jerusalem, Israel refuses to hand over West Bank land to the Palestinians; Lebanese guerrillas attack an Israeli commando unit in Lebanon, killing at least 11 Israelis.

1998 - North Korea's parliament elects Kim Jong Il to the presidency, completing the communist world's first hereditary succession.

1999 - Tens of thousands of people flee East Timor, terrified as pro-Indonesian militias besiege a U.N. compound and set fire to homes.

2000 - Fierce fighting devastates areas of Jaffna Peninsula, Sri Lanka for a second day, leaving at least 344 people dead, as the government orders a major military offensive ahead of key elections.

2001 - Peru's attorney general files homicide charges against ex-President Alberto Fujimori, linking him to two massacres by paramilitary death squads in the early 1990s.

2005 - Seconds after takeoff an Indonesian airliner shakes violently and slams into a bustling neighborhood, bursting into flames and killing over 140 people _ many on the ground.

2006 - Felipe Calderon becomes president-elect of Mexico when the nation's top electoral court votes unanimously to reject allegations of fraud and certify his narrow victory.

2007 - Hundreds of Buddhist monks hold an anti-government protest march in a central Myanmar town, halting their demonstration only after soldiers fire warning shots and arresting several of them.

2008 __Europe's Rosetta space probe makes a successful flyby of the Steins asteroid 250 million miles (402 million kilometers) from Earth.

Today's Birthdays:

Louis XIV, the "Sun King" of France (1638-1715); Caspar David Friedrich, German painter (1774-1840); Giacomo Meyerbeer, German composer (1791-1864); Paul Bourget, French author (1852-1935); Arthur Koestler, Hungarian-born British writer (1905-1983); John Cage, U.S. composer (1912-1992); Raquel Welch, U.S. actress (1940--); Bob Newhart, actor/comedian (1929--); Werner Herzog, German director (1942--).

Thought for Today:

It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg _ Anatole France, French author and critic (1844-1924).