Highlights in history on this date:

1620 - The Mayflower ship, carrying the first permanent European settlers to New England, lands in what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts.

1783 - The first manned balloon flight sails over Paris for 25 minutes.

1806 - Napoleon Bonaparte of France issues Berlin Decrees, declaring blockade of Britain.

1877 - American Thomas A. Edison announces invention of the phonograph.

1922 - Rebecca L. Felton of Georgia is sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate.

1938 - Western border areas of Czechoslovakia are forcibly incorporated into German Reich.

1958 - A Soviet-East German commission meets in East Berlin to discuss the transfer to East German control of Soviet functions and end to the occupation status in Berlin.

1962 - China agrees to a ceasefire on India-China border.

1963 - Roman Catholic Vatican Council authorizes use of vernacular instead of Latin in the Sacraments.

1976 - Syrian army completes its final phase of occupation of Lebanon.

1977 - An estimated 3,000 people are believed to have perished in cyclone that strikes southeastern India, submerging entire villages in tidal waves.

1980 - A fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas kills 87 people.

1985 - Former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard is arrested and accused of spying for Israel. He pleads guilty and is sentenced to life in prison.

1987 - Riot police stand guard to prevent violence by rival supporters as presidential candidates in South Korea trade charges of corruption and cruelty.

1990 - Michael R. Milken, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc.'s former "junk-bond" chief, is sentenced to ten years in prison. It is the most severe sentence handed down in a series of Wall Street securities fraud cases dating from 1986.

1991 - The U.N. Security Council chooses Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt to be the new secretary-general.

1992 - U.S. Senator Bob Packwood issues an apology but refuses to discuss allegations that he made unwelcome sexual advances to 10 women over the years.

1993 - Three former Panamanian soldiers are found guilty of involvement in the previously unsolved 1971 murder of Hector Gallego, a Colombian Roman Catholic priest.

1994 - NATO retaliates for repeated Serb attacks on a U.N. safe haven by bombing an airfield in a Serb-controlled section of Croatia.

1995 - Former Nazi Capt. Erich Priebke is extradited from Argentina to Italy to face charges in the massacre of 335 Italian civilians in Nazi-occupied Rome.

1996 - A gas explosion at a shoe store in San Juan, Puerto Rico, kills 19 people and injures about 80.

1997 - U.N. weapons inspectors return to Iraq a month after inspections were halted when Iraq refused to let the teams include American members.

1998 - Italian officials release Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan, the head of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the main Kurdish rebel group.

1999 - China successfully completes an unmanned spacecraft test, a breakthrough leading toward China eventually becoming the third country to put humans in space, after the United States and the former Soviet Union.

2000 - Research published in a British medical journal shows children who use mobile phones risk suffering memory loss, sleeping disorders and headaches. The study says that those younger than 18 are more vulnerable to cell phone radiation because their immune systems are less robust.

2001 - Maoist rebel leaders in Nepal withdraw from their four-month-old cease-fire with the government, and launch their worst-ever attacks, killing more than 200 people.

2003 - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says an outbreak of hepatitis A that killed three people and left 605 sick in Monaca, Pennsylvania was caused by tainted scallions imported from Mexico.

2004 - A strong earthquake rocks the Caribbean islands of Dominica and Guadeloupe, killing at least one person and destroying numerous homes.

2005 - Secretary-General Kofi Annan warns that Sudan's volatile Darfur region faces an increasing threat of complete lawlessness and anarchy, and says it is crucial that the government and rebels conclude a peace agreement by the end of the year.

2006 - Pierre Gemayel, an anti-Syrian politician and scion of Lebanon's most prominent Christian family, is gunned down in a carefully orchestrated assassination that heightened tensions between the U.S.-backed government and the militant Hezbollah.

2007 - Costa Rican President Oscar Arias signs into law a free trade agreement with the country's Central American neighbors, the United States and the Dominican Republic.

2008 - Somali pirates release a hijacked Greek-owned tanker MV Genius with all 19 crew members safe and the oil cargo intact after payment of a ransom.

Today's Birthdays:

Carlo Fragoni, Italian poet (1692-1768); Voltaire, French poet-philosopher (1694-1778); Bjork, Icelandic singer/actress (1965--); Goldie Hawn, U.S. actress (1945--).

Thought For Today:

Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise _ The fourth Earl of Chesterfield, English author (1694-1773).