Highlights in history on this date:

1605 - English authorities arrest Guy Fawkes, the leader of the "Gunpowder Plot" to blow up Houses of Parliament.

1630 - Treaty of Madrid ends Anglo-Spanish War.

1688 - William of Orange lands in Tor Bay, England, heralding the start of the Glorious Revolution whereby he becomes William III of England.

1817 - Third Mahratta War against British in India begins with attacks on Poona, Nagpur and Indore.

1872 - Suffragist Susan B. Anthony is fined US$100 for attempting to vote in a U.S. presidential election. She never pays the fine.

1895 - George B. Selden of Rochester, New York, receives the first U.S. patent for an automobile.

1914 - France and Britain declare war on Turkey; Britain annexes Cyprus.

1950 - U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur reports massing of Chinese in North Korea.

1956 - Britain and France land troops in Egypt during fighting between Egyptian and Israeli forces around the Suez Canal. A cease-fire is declared two days later.

1962 - U.N. General Assembly demands all nuclear tests cease by Jan. 1, 1963.

1967 - An Anglican bishop announces his resignation in protest against South Africa's apartheid system.

1974 - Ella T. Grasso is elected governor of Connecticut, the first woman to win gubernatorial office in the United States without succeeding her husband.

1978 - Former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi makes a major political comeback, winning a seat in the lower house of Parliament.

1982 - Itaipu Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric plant, is inaugurated on the Brazil-Paraguay border.

1985 - The U.N. General Assembly approves a resolution calling on Vietnam to withdraw its forces from Cambodia.

1987 - South Africa releases Govan Mbeki, African National Congress leader and colleague of Nelson Mandela, after 23 years in prison.

1988 - Algeria's President Chadli Bendjedid appoints former head of military security to form new government in wake of widespread riots.

1990 - Rabbi Meir Kahane, 58, founder of the militant Jewish Defense League and Israel's extremist anti-Arab Kach party, is assassinated after giving a talk in a New York City hotel. His alleged killer, an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen, is wounded and captured as he tries to escape.

1991 - Billionaire publisher Robert Maxwell is found dead in waters off Canary Islands where his yacht had been cruising.

1992 - In its first free elections since 1981, Ghana's leader Jerry J. Rawlings becomes president.

1993 - Talks are held on restoring ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power collapse in Haiti.

1994 - Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, 83, discloses he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease; George Foreman, 45, becomes boxing's oldest heavyweight champion by knocking out Michael Moorer in the 10th round of their World Boxing Association fight in Las Vegas.

1995 - A draft peace accord presented to the parties in Bosnia excludes Serb leader Radovan Karadzic from power.

1998 - Helmer (Pacho) Herrera Buitrago, a leading member of the Cali drug cartel, is shot dead in a maximum security prison in Colombia.

2000 - Two thousand police officers struggle to control 1,200 neo-Nazi marchers and left-wing counter-protesters in Berlin. Some officers are hurt in scuffles.

2001 - Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, who led the country's Marxist-leaning government from 1979 to 1990, is defeated by businessman Enrique Bolanos Geyer.

2003 - Gary Leon Ridgway pleads guilty to 48 murders known collectively as the Green River killings, after the Seattle-area waterway in which the first of the victims was discovered in 1982.

2004 - Abimael Guzman, the founder of Peru's Maoist Shining Path Insurgency, goes on trial in a civilian court after his life sentence by a secret military court is overturned.

2006 - Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death by an Iraqi court for crimes against humanity, closing a quarter-century-old chapter of violent suppression by the former dictator.

2007 - A Chinese satellite _ the Chang'e 1 named after a mythical Chinese goddess who flew to the moon _ successfully enters lunar orbit, a month after rival Japan put its own probe into orbit around the moon.

2008 - British beekeepers swarm Parliament and the prime minister's office, demanding more funds for research after the number of Britain's honey bees dropped by nearly a third in the past year.

Today's Birthdays:

Philippe de Plessis-Mornay, French author (1549-1623); Will Durant, U.S. historian-philosopher (1885-1981); Roy Rogers, former U.S. cowboy actor (1912-1998); Elke Sommer, German actress (1940--); Art Garfunkel, U.S. pop singer (1941--); Tatum O'Neal, U.S. actress (1963--); Sam Shepard, U.S. actor/playwright (1943--).

Thought for Today:

The most exhausting thing in life ... is being insincere _ Anne Morrow Lindbergh, American writer (1906-2001).