Highlights in history on this date:

1444 - Turks annihilate a Hungarian force at the Battle of Varna _ now in Bulgaria _ ending the European powers' efforts to save Constantinople from Turkish conquest.

1729 - Portugal loses Mombassa to the Muscat Arabs.

1871 - American journalist Henry Stanley finds African explorer Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, central Africa, on Lake Tanganyika; delivers his famous greeting "Dr. Livingstone I presume?"

1885 - The son of German engineer Otto Daimler becomes the first motorcyclist, riding his father's invention 10 kilometers (6 miles).

1928 - Hirohito is enthroned as Emperor of Japan.

1937 - President Getulio Vargas of Brazil cancels elections and decrees the Estado Novo dictatorship.

1938 - Anti-Semitic legislation is adopted in Italy.

1945 - Western powers recognize Communist-dominated Albanian government.

1954 - The Iwo Jima Memorial is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia. The battle for Iwo Jima in Japan during World War II resulted in the deaths of 21,000 Japanese and 6,800 American soldiers.

1963 - A cholera epidemic in India and Pakistan kills more than 1,500 people in a few weeks.

1969 - The children's educational program "Sesame Street" makes its debut on PBS television in the United States.

1970 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 17, which lands a roving vehicle on the Moon's surface.

1975 - Angola becomes independent of Portugal in the midst of a civil war; the U.N. General Assembly approves a resolution equating Zionism with racism. The resolution is repealed in 1991.

1976 - Syrian troops and tanks enter Beirut, Lebanon, without resistance under agreement for multinational Arab peacekeeping force.

1980 - East German President Erich Honecker makes his first state visit to a western country _ Austria.

1982 - The newly finished Vietnam Veterans Memorial opens in Washington, D.C.

1987 - Niger's President Seyni Kountche dies in Paris, and is replaced as head of state by army chief Ali Seibou.

1988 - Soldiers open fire and kill at least 15 people in Sri Lanka when anti-government demonstrators defy a curfew.

1989 - Todor Zhivkov resigns after 35 years as Communist Party leader of Bulgaria.

1990 - Chandra Shekhar is sworn in as prime minister of India; Shiite Muslim militias begin 10-day pullout from Beirut.

1991 - Street fighting rages between Serbs and Croats struggling for control of Danube River town of Vukovar.

1992 - U.N. weapons inspectors in Baghdad remove 200 drums containing uranium from an Iraqi atomic facility.

1994 - Chandrika Kumaratunga, daughter of two prime ministers, wins presidential election in Sri Lanka; Iraq formally recognizes Kuwait as sovereign state.

1995 - Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1998 - A jury in New York City convicts Corey Arthur, 20, of second-degree murder in the 1997 torture and murder of Jonathan Levin, his former high-school English teacher. Levin was the son of Gerald Levin, the chairman of Time Warner Inc.

2000 - Philippine President Joseph Estrada denies new corruption allegations that he received a $20 million kickback from the sale of the country's largest telephone company and pocketed more than $16 million from a controversial stock sale.

2004 - Chile makes a step toward confronting its grim legacy of human rights abuses under the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet by completing a lengthy report on torture and political imprisonment with testimonies from at least 35,000 victims.

2005 - Thousands of Jordanians rally in their capital and other cities, denouncing the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, a day after three deadly hotel bombings kill at least 57 people. Al-Qaida's Iraq branch claims responsibility for the attacks.

2006 - Zimbabwe's government launches a program to issue 99-year leases to black farmers allocated land seized mostly from white farmers.

2007 - Six U.S. troops are killed when insurgents ambush their foot patrol in the high mountains of eastern Afghanistan _ the most lethal attack against American forces of the year, making 2007 the deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

2008 - Railway and mass transit workers in Italy stage a strike, creating chaos for commuters, while a wildcat protest by some of Alitalia's staff forces the national airline to scrap dozens of flights.

Today's Birthdays:

Martin Luther, German leader of the Reformation (1483-1546); Francois Couperin, French composer (1668-1733); Friedrich von Schiller, German author (1759-1805); Oliver Goldsmith, Irish author (1728-1774); Richard Burton, British actor (1925-1984); Mackenzie Phillips, U.S. actress (1959--); Brittany Murphy, U.S. actress (1977--); Sinbad, U.S. actor/comedian (1956--).

Thought For Today:

A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man _ William Hazlitt, British essayist (1778-1830).