Highlights in history on this date:

1860 - Abraham Lincoln is elected president of the United States.

1869 - The first intercollegiate football game in the United States takes place between Rutgers and Princeton University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

1913 - Mohandas K. Gandhi is arrested as he leads a protest march of Indian miners in South Africa.

1937 - Italy joins German-Japanese anti-Communist pact.

1942 - Tidal wave kills 10,000 people in Bengal, India.

1944 - Lord Moyne, the British resident minister in the Middle East, is killed by Jewish extremists in Cairo.

1955 - South Africa quits the U.N. General Assembly and its committees for the rest of the 10th session after the Assembly adopts a resolution expressing "concern" that South Africa maintains its apartheid policy.

1962 - U.N. General Assembly calls for economic sanctions against South Africa because of its racial policies.

1968 - Vietnam peace talks begin in Paris.

1970 - Italy formally recognizes China.

1971 - The World Synod of Roman Catholic Bishops ends a stormy meeting at Vatican, divided on the question of whether married men may become priests.

1974 - The Soviet Union calls for Palestinian statehood as part of any Middle East settlement.

1976 - Guerrilla warfare in Rhodesia is endorsed by leaders of neighboring black countries at a meeting in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.

1977 - A dam collapse drowns 38 people as a wall of water submerges trailer camps outside Toccoa in Georgia, United States.

1981 - The Swedish government releases a Soviet submarine that ran aground 11 days earlier in restricted Swedish waters near a naval base. Sweden announces an investigation had concluded the submarine was probably carrying nuclear warheads.

1984 - U.S. Republican President Ronald Reagan wins re-election to a second term by a landslide over Democrat Walter F. Mondale.

1991 - The last of more than 700 Kuwaiti oil wells set on fire by Iraqi forces during the Persian Gulf war are doused, as firefighting teams complete in eight months a job oil officials estimated would take more than two years.

1993 - Georgian troops seize Zugdidi, last stronghold of rebels loyal to ousted president Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

1994 - Rescuers struggle to reach villages and families trapped under the rubble of collapsed houses amid the devastation caused by heavy flooding across southern Europe.

1996 - Approximately 1,000 people are killed when a cyclone hits Andhra Pradesh state in southern India. It is the deadliest cyclone in India since 1977, when more than 10,000 people were killed, also in Andhra Pradesh.

1997 - Severe flooding kills 31 people in western Spain and eastern Portugal.

1998 - Paul Kagame, Rwanda's vice president and minister of defense, admits Rwandan troops were aiding a rebellion in neighboring Congo aimed at ousting that country's leader, President Laurent Kabila.

1999 - Australians, refusing to shake their colonial past, reject a referendum to make their nation the world's 147th republic and drop Britain's queen as their head of state.

2000 - Surgeons in London begin to separate conjoined twin girls in a long and complex operation that ends up killing one baby to give her sister a chance for a longer life.

2001 - Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder pledges up to 3,900 German troops for the U.S. war on terrorism, pushing the nation toward its most far-reaching military participation since World War II.

2002 - The U.N. children's agency (UNICEF) says one woman dies every 20 minutes in Afghanistan because of complications during pregnancy or childbirth _ a maternal mortality rate that ranks among the highest in the world.

2004 - An armed group fires on a police station in Haiti's third largest city of Gonaives, prompting officers to flee while an unknown number of prisoners escape and more than 100 people start a flurry of looting.

2005 - Grenade-tossing attackers in Somalia's capital set upon the prime minister, a day after two boatloads of the increasingly bold pirates plying its seas tried to seize a cruise ship carrying Western tourists.

2006 - A German utility confirms it caused a weekend outage that left millions of people in several countries without power, but denies that the blackout revealed a lack of investment in Europe's power grids.

2007 - Astronomers say a new planet has been discovered orbiting a sun-like star 41 light years away, making it the first known planetary quintet outside our solar system.

2008 - Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck becomes Bhutan's first king since its transformation to democracy.

Today's Birthdays:

John Philip Sousa, U.S. composer (1854-1937); James Jones, U.S. novelist (1921-1977); Mike Nichols, U.S. theatrical director-producer (1931--); Sally Fields, U.S. actress (1946--); Maria Shriver, U.S. journalist and California's first lady (1955--); Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, U.S. supermodel/actress (1972--).

Thought For Today:

Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects: is this not true of fear? _ Elizabeth Bowen