Highlights in history on this date:

1659 - Peace of the Pyrenees is reached between Spain and France.

1733 - Spain and France sign the Treaty of Escurial and form an alliance against England.

1874 - The Republican Party is symbolized as an elephant in a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly magazine.

1916 - Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

1917 - Bolsheviks seize the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg during the October Revolution. According to the Julian calendar, still in use in Russia, the date was October 25.

1919 - Socialists depose the king of Bavaria, ending the rule of one of Europe's oldest dynasties, and proclaim a republic.

1939 - Sovereigns of Belgium and Holland approach Britain's King George VI advocating peace with Germany.

1944 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt wins an unprecedented fourth term in office, defeating Thomas E. Dewey.

1950 - The king of Nepal is deposed by the state's hereditary prime minister. The king's 3-year-old grandson, Prince Gyanendra, is installed as ruler. The deposed king favored demands for increased popular government in the nation, which is ruled by the prime minister.

1956 - British and French declare a cease-fire in Egypt, but Britain says it will evacuate troops only on arrival of U.N. Emergency Force.

1966 - Chinese diplomats walk out of the Bolshevik Anniversary celebration in Moscow after hearing Soviet criticism of Chinese government.

1967 - Carl Stokes is elected the first black mayor of a major city _ Cleveland, Ohio; U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs a bill establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

1972 - Richard M. Nixon is re-elected as U.S. president.

1973 - United States and Egypt announce they will resume diplomatic relations and exchange ambassadors; Congress overrides U.S. President Richard M. Nixon's veto of the War Powers Act, which limits a chief executive's power to wage war without congressional approval.

1987 - Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba is removed from office by his prime minister who says the 84-year-old leader is senile.

1988 - Powerful earthquake just inside China's mountainous southern border kills 600 people.

1989 - Multiparty elections held in Namibia under a U.N. peace plan is a step toward independence; David N. Dinkins is elected New York City's first black mayor.

1990 - Shots are fired near Mikhail Gorbachev during Soviet Union's Revolution Day parade; Irish voters elect a radical feminist to presidency.

1991 - Basketball star Magic Johnson announces he has tested positive for the AIDS virus and will retire.

1992 - King Hussein of Jordan tells Iraqis it is time to put an end to the government of Saddam Hussein.

1993 - Palestinian gunmen fire on a rabbi's car and Jewish settlers in the occupied territories riot.

1994 - The former head of a Bosnian Serb concentration camp becomes the first to be charged with war crimes after World War II when the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague issues its first indictment.

1995 - Three American servicemen plead guilty to raping a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl. The attack outrages the Japanese and strains ties between Japan and the United States.

1996 - A Nigerian airliner carrying 141 people crashes into swamp land east of Lagos, killing all aboard.

1997 - Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi signs a package of reforms aimed at making Kenya a multiparty democracy.

1998 - Colombian soldiers pull out from a region the size of Switzerland, the government's boldest concession to rebels in 34 years of civil war.

1999 - On the eve of final status talks with the Palestinians, three pipe bombs explode in an Israeli beach town and wound 33 people.

2000 - Americans choose Republican George W. Bush as president over Democratic Vice President Al Gore by 537 votes. The results of the election were not known for more than a month because of a dispute over the vote count in Florida.

2001 - Opposition forces claim another victory against the Taliban in northern Afghanistan as some of their forces advance to just 13 kilometers (8 miles) outside the strategic city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

2004 - Egypt denies it has a secret nuclear weapons program in an angry response to reports that the U.N. atomic watchdog agency is investigating the discovery of plutonium particles near an Egyptian nuclear facility.

2005 - Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori is arrested in Chile on charges involving corruption and massacres as he returns home to run for re-election after five years as a protected exile in Japan. Fujimori, target of an international arrest warrant, faces extradition to Peru.

2006 - Tajikistan's authoritarian president, Emomali Rakhmonov, wins a new seven-year term in an election that foreign observers say lacked any genuine competition.

2007 - More than 30 surgeons in southern India complete a grueling 24-hour operation on Lakshmi, a 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs. Doctors remove her extra limbs, salvage her organs and rebuild her pelvis area.

2008 - An environmentalist group and four Nigerians file suit against Royal Dutch Shell PLC in the Netherlands, claiming the company was negligent in cleaning up oil spills in Nigeria.

Today's Birthdays:

Marie Curie, French scientist (1867-1934); Leon Trotsky, Russian revolutionary, (1879-1940); Billy Graham, U.S. evangelist (1918--); Joan Sutherland, Australian soprano (1926--); Joni Mitchell, Canadian folk singer (1943--); Christopher Knight, U.S. actor (1957--).

Thought For Today:

Examine what is said, not him who speaks _ Arab proverb.