Highlights in history on this date:

1651 - Limerick, Ireland, surrenders to British after lengthy siege.

1787 - The first of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays calling for ratification of the U.S. Constitution, is published in a New York newspaper.

1806 - France's Napoleon Bonaparte occupies Berlin.

1807 - Spain and France agree to conquer Portugal.

1871 - Britain annexes the diamond fields of Kimberly, South Africa.

1904 - The first rapid transit subway opens in New York City.

1922 - Southern Rhodesia referendum rejects joining Union of South Africa.

1938 - U.S. company DuPont, announces the invention of nylon.

1943 - Germans close the Norway-Sweden border after moving up additional troops during World War II.

1961 - U.S. and Soviet tanks are brought to the border between East and West Berlin because of a decree ordering all foreigners to submit to identity controls on entering East Berlin.

1966 - The U.N. General Assembly proclaims termination of South Africa's mandate over Southwest Africa.

1973 - U.N. peacekeeping forces arrive in Cairo to attempt to set up a lasting cease-fire between Israeli and Arab forces.

1975 - Egypt's President Anwar Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin are awarded Nobel Peace Prize.

1977 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter rules out any U.S. embargo on trade with South Africa or any ban on U.S. investments to protest its racial policies.

1987 - South Korean voters approve a new constitution, clearing the way for the first direct presidential elections in 16 years.

1989 - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announces an end to cease-fire with U.S.-backed anti-Sandinista rebels.

1990 - Roman Catholic bishops conclude a monthlong synod in Rome, reaffirming the policy of celibacy for priests. The possibility of easing the church's opposition to married priests came up as a way to help overcome a shortage of clerics in some dioceses.

1992 - Israeli jets bomb Southern Lebanon avenging the deaths of six Israelis, but the Israeli government resists calls to withdraw from Middle East peace talks.

1995 - After eluding a massive manhunt for three days, a North Korean spy is fatally shot when he tries to break through a cordon of South Korean commandos on a mountain near the border between the two countries.

1997 - The Dow Jones industrial average tumbles 554.26 points, forcing the stock market to shut down for the first time since the 1981 assassination attempt on U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

1999 - Up to five gunmen seize Armenia's parliament in a torrent of automatic weapons fire, killing the prime minister and seven others before taking dozens hostage; the U.S. federal budget surplus is put at $123 billion in 1998, marking the first back-to-back surpluses since the 1950s.

2001 - Britain announces it will provide up to 600 special forces for operations in Afghanistan in a sign that allied forces are preparing for a sustained campaign of raids.

2002 - Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wins Brazil's presidential runoff election, becoming the nation's first leftist and working-class president.

2003 - Five coordinated suicide bombing attacks kill at least 35 people in Baghdad, and wound more than 200 others.

2004 - Pleading they cannot properly defend an unwilling client, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's court-appointed lawyers ask to quit, leaving the U.N. tribunal in a dilemma over how to conclude the most important war crimes trial in half a century in a way history will judge as fair.

2005 - Israel kills seven Palestinians in a missile strike against Islamic Jihad, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refuses to meet with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas until he cracks down on armed groups.

2006 - Germany's military suspends two soldiers from duty in connection with photos of troops posing with a skull in Afghanistan.

2007 - Astronauts add a new room to the international space station, attaching a bus-sized living compartment named Harmony with the help of spacewalkers working outside and robot arm operators working inside.

2008 - Mexicans would live an average of two months longer if they breathed cleaner air, Harvard researchers conclude. The study found that some 7,600 people's lives were cut short each year by diseases related to air pollution between 2001-2005, representing about 1.6 percent of annual deaths in Mexico.

Today's Birthdays:

Niccolo Paganini, Italian composer (1782-1840); Gen. Fructuoso Rivera, first president of Uruguay (1784-1854); Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. president (1858-1919); Dylan Thomas, British poet (1914-1953); John Cleese, British actor (1939--); Peter Martins, Danish dancer (1946--); Simon LeBon, English pop singer (1958--); Roberto Benigni, Italian actor/director (1952--).

Thought for Today:

Happiness is a way station between too much and too little _ Channing Pollock, American author and dramatist (1880-1946).