Highlights in history on this date:

1616 - Cardinal Richelieu becomes France's minister of state for foreign affairs and war.

1637 - Peter Minuit and the first Swedish settlers to the New World set sail for Delaware.

1789 - New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Constitution's Bill of Rights.

1818 - Simon Bolivar formally declares Venezuela independent of Spain.

1873 - Rival cities of Buda and Pest are united to form the capital of Hungary.

1901 - Second Hay-Pauncefoot Treaty provides for construction of the Panama Canal by the United States.

1910 - Revolution breaks out in Mexico, led by Francisco I. Madero.

1917 - The Ukrainian Republic is proclaimed.

1924 - Kurdish Revolt in Turkey is crushed.

1929 - Spanish artist Salvador Dali has his first one-man show.

1945 - International War Crimes Tribunal begins as 24 accused Nazi World War II criminals go on trial in Nuremberg, Germany.

1947 - England's Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten are married in London's Westminster Abbey.

1959 - Britain, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark and Sweden meet to form European Free Trade Association.

1969 - The Nixon administration in United States announces a halt to residential use of the pesticide DDT as part of a total phase-out.

1975 - General Francisco Franco dies. Two days later Alfonso XIII's grandson, Juan Carlos, becomes King of Spain.

1977 - Egypt's President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to speak before the Israeli Parliament, telling them Egypt seeks peace.

1980 - A special tribunal begins the two-month trial of "the Gang of Four," led by Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao Tse-tung's wife, for masterminding the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution in China.

1984 - South Africa announces it will begin negotiations with Angola on the withdrawal of South African forces from Angola's south.

1990 - Saddam Hussein orders another 250,000 Iraqi troops into Kuwait.

1992 - A fire at Windsor Castle destroys one of Britain's biggest attractions, but a team of rescuers help save the castle's art treasures.

1993 - Macedonian jetliner carrying 116 people crashes into mountain, only one person survives.

1994 - Angola's government and rebels sign a peace accord.

1995 - Polish President Lech Walesa loses to Aleksander Kwasniewski in the presidential runoff; the Hubble Space telescope photographs the birth of the star, Eagle Nebula.

1996 - Flames roar through a high-rise in Hong Kong, killing 39 people and injuring at least 81.

1997 - Twenty-nine industrialized nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development agree to outlaw bribing of foreign officials.

1998 - Israeli occupation forces pull back from 9 percent of the Palestinian West Bank in the first of a three-tiered redeployment outlined in the Wye Memorandum, an interim agreement signed by Israel and the PLO in late October.

1999 - Anti-U.S. protests rock Greece as U.S. President Bill Clinton is due to arrive for a visit. He says the United States was wrong to back the military junta that took control in 1967.

2000 - Leaders of Japan's governing party reach a last-minute compromise to avert the removal of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori in a no-confidence vote and ward off a protracted internal power struggle.

2001 - Colleagues identify the bodies of four international journalists forced from their cars by armed men and killed in an ambush on the road to the Afghan capital, Kabul.

2002 - Turkey's broadcasting authority authorizes state radio and television to air limited programs in the once-banned Kurdish language, a step toward meeting EU membership requirements.

2003 - Car bombs explode outside the British consulate and the offices of London-based bank HSBC in Istanbul, Turkey, killing 27 people and wounding nearly 450.

2004 - President Chandrika Kumaratunga declares that Sri Lanka will lift a 28-year moratorium on the death penalty after a High Court judge was gunned down at his home.

2005 - Widespread violence mars the second round of Egypt's parliamentary vote as clashes break out nationwide between Muslim Brotherhood supporters, ruling party supporters and police. At least one person is killed.

2006 - Armed men force their way into the offices of a Nigerian aid group in the southern oil hub of Port Harcourt, killing two people and wounding two others.

2007 - More than 3,000 people jailed in Pakistan under emergency rule are released, the latest sign that President Gen. Pervez Musharraf was rolling back some of the harsher measures taken against his opponents.

2008 - The U.N. Security Council votes unanimously to impose new sanctions aimed at reducing the arms flowing into Somalia and the lawlessness and piracy that have flourished there.

Today's Birthdays:

Selma Lagerlof, Swedish novelist and Nobel laureate (1858-1940); Edwin Hubble, U.S. astronomer (1889-1953); Alistair Cooke, English journalist and television personality (1908-2004); Bo Derek, U.S. actress (1956--); Sean Young, U.S. actress (1959--); Ming-Na, U.S. actress (1967--).

Thought For Today:

No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself _ Thomas Mann, German author (1875-1955).