Highlights in history on this date:

602 - Roman Emperor Maurice and his five sons are beheaded at Chalcedon in Asia Minor.

1095 - Pope Urban II calls for a crusade.

1582 - William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway.

1703 - Coastal storm in England takes estimated 8,000 lives.

1919 - Bulgaria signs World War I peace treaty, which yields territory to Greece and Yugoslavia.

1926 - Communists revolt in Java, Indonesia.

1940 - Germany annexes French province of Lorraine during World War II.

1942 - The French navy at Toulon scuttles its ships and submarines to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis.

1948 - The U.N. Security Council gives full authority to continue negotiations with India and Pakistan for a truce and plebiscite in Kashmir.

1950 - United Nations troops retreat in Korea.

1954 - Former U.S. diplomat Alger Hiss, convicted of perjury in 1950 for having denied he passed Department of State secrets to a Communist courier, is released from prison after serving 44 months.

1961 - Soviet Union proposes immediate ban on nuclear testing without international controls.

1962 - Britain agrees to provide arms to India to resist Chinese aggression.

1967 - Israeli forces raze Arab buildings in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank in response to Arab attacks, while the return of some Arab refugees from the East Bank to the Israeli-occupied West Bank resumes.

1973 - The U.S. Senate votes 92-3 to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who resigned.

1979 - Iranian students occupying the U.S. Embassy in Tehran surround the building with explosives and claim to have planted mines in the compound to ward off any attack by the U.S. in an attempt to free the hostages.

1983 - A huge rally called by all Uruguayan political parties demands the end of the dictatorship and return to civilian democratic rule.

1985 - The British House of Commons approves the Anglo-Irish accord, giving Dublin a consultative role in the governing of British-ruled Northern Ireland.

1989 - Colombian airplane crashes, killing 107 people.

1990 - John Major is elected prime minister of Britain.

1992 - Rebels who try to take over Venezuela by bombing the Presidential Palace are defeated by troops 12 hours later.

1993 - After weeks of denial, the British government admits contacts with the Irish Republican Army.

1994 - Serbs pound the outskirts of Bihac in northwestern Bosnia as U.S. and NATO officials admit they are unable to stop the advance.

1995 - Liamine Zeroual promises democracy in Algeria when he is sworn in as president.

1996 - A gas explosion in a coal mine in Shanxi province of China kills at least 91 miners.

1997 - Albanian separatists attack a police station in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. A policeman and a rebel die in the gunbattle.

1998 - Sensing growing popular pressure to get troops out of Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promises a thorough review of Israel's policy.

1999 - Northern Ireland's biggest party clears the way for the formation of an unprecedented Protestant-Catholic administration, the long-elusive goal of the 1998 peace accord.

2000 - The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers) rebels prepare to hold unconditional peace negotiations with the government to end Sri Lanka's 17-year-long civil war.

2001 - U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns and retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni meet with top Israeli and Palestinian officials as part of a U.S. peace initiative.

2002 - Prominent Pakistani doctor Dr. Amer Azia, who admitted to treating Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders before and after the Sept. 11. attacks says that the terrorist mastermind is in excellent health and showed no signs of kidney failure.

2003 - U.S. President George W. Bush pays an unannounced visit to U.S. troops in Baghdad on the U.S. national holiday of Thanksgiving; Iraqi insurgents target U.S. allies in Iraq, killing seven Spaniards, two Japanese, two Koreans and a Colombian.

2004 - Chechnya's president firmly rules out any negotiations with top rebel leaders, saying there is "nothing to talk about" with former separatist president Aslan Maskhadov and warlord Shamil Basayev.

2005 - Chechens vote in their first parliamentary elections since Russia sent troops back to the Caucasus region six years before to crush a separatist insurgency.

2006 - Two rivers in Somalia swell, flooding hundreds of villages and sending thousands fleeing to high ground as international agencies struggle to deliver aid.

2007 - The Dalai Lama announces that the Tibetan people will hold a referendum before he dies to decide whether a new system of leadership would better serve the struggle for self-determination.

2008 - Somali pirates release a Greek-owned cargo ship Centauri and its 25 crew members seized more than two months ago.

Today's Birthdays:

Anders Celsius, Swedish astronomer and inventor of Celsius scale (1701-1744); Bruce Lee, Chinese-American actor (1940-1973); Jimi Hendrix, American rock guitarist (1942-1970); Michael Vartan, French actor (1968--).

Thought For Today:

"Who does not thank for little will not thank for much." _ Estonian proverb.