Highlights in history on this date:

1534 - Spanish conquistadors establish presence in Quito, an Inca city in the Andes.

1790 - Congress moves from New York City to Philadelphia.

1857 - British forces recapture Cawnpore in India.

1884 - Army engineers complete construction of the Washington Monument.

1906 - Self-government is granted in Transvaal and Orange River colonies in what is now South Africa.

1907 - Frontier between Uganda and East Africa is defined.

1916 - Bucharest, capital of Romania, falls to German troops.

1917 - Republic of Finland is proclaimed; collision between Belgian and French ammunition ships at Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, takes 1,600 lives.

1921 - Britain signs peace treaty with Ireland establishing Irish Free State, and Ireland accepts Dominion status.

1923 - A presidential address is broadcast on radio for the first time as U.S. President Calvin Coolidge speaks to a joint session of Congress.

1929 - Women's suffrage begins in Turkey.

1938 - France and Germany sign pact on inviolability of their frontier.

1941 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appeals for peace to Japan's Emperor Hirohito _ one day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He also authorizes the Manhattan Project, which results in the creation of the atomic bomb.

1947 - Everglades National Park in Florida is dedicated by U.S. President Harry S. Truman.

1957 - America's first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit blows up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1959 - U.N. General Assembly says Togoland should receive independence.

1961 - Heavy fighting erupts in Congo's Katanga Province between United Nations and Katanga forces.

1966 - Britain calls for United Nations sanctions against rebellious Rhodesia, including ban on oil shipments.

1978 - A referendum approves constitution returning Spain to democracy.

1984 - Death toll rises to 1,600 from gas leak from U.S.-built pesticide plant in Bhopal, India.

1987 - Bangladesh government dissolves Parliament amid opposition campaign to topple President Hussain Mohammad Ershad's administration.

1988 - Sources say ethnic violence kills at least three people and injures six others in southern Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia.

1989 - Gunman kills 14 women and wounds nine women and four men at University of Montreal before killing himself; car bomb believed to be set by drug traffickers kills 59 in Colombia.

1990 - Gen. Hussain Mohammad Ershad, who ruled Bangladesh for nine years after coming to power in a coup, steps down at the height of a pro-democracy movement.

1993 - Serb forces shell Sarajevo for five hours, taking aim at shoppers bartering for food and mourners burying their dead. Five people are killed and at least 27 wounded.

1997 - Yehuda Gil, an agent for Israel's Mossad spy agency, is found to have been feeding Israelis damaging disinformation on Syria for years. This comes on heels of a September scandal _ a botched Mossad assassination of a Palestinian figure in Jordan.

1998 - Six years after staging a bloody coup attempt, former Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez is elected president of Venezuela, dealing a blow to the establishment that ruled the country for 40 years.

1999 - NASA says it has not detected a signal from the Mars Polar Lander, two days after it began its ascent to Mars. It is later determined that the robot spacecraft was destroyed following a software glitch.

2002 - Israeli forces kills 10 Palestinians, including two United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school employees, during a pre-dawn incursion into the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

2004 - Islamic militants set off explosives and shoot their way into the heavily guarded U.S. consulate in Jiddah_ a bold assault that shows Saudi Arabia's crackdown on terrorists has not succeeded.

2005 - A military plane loaded with Iranian journalists slams into a Tehran apartmant building as it attempts to make an emergency landing. At least 115 people are killed including passengers and residents of the building.

2006 - After decades of dictatorship and wars, Congo swears in its first freely elected president since 1960, installing Joseph Kabila, the son of a rebel leader, who promises a new era of order.

2007 - A land mine explosion blamed on Tamil separatists tears through a passenger bus crowded with civilians in northern Sri Lanka, killing at least 16 people and wounding 22 others.

2008 - Amsterdam unveils plans to close brothels, sex shops and marijuana cafes in its ancient city center as part of a major effort to drive organized crime out of the tourist haven.

Today's Birthdays:

Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, French physicist and chemist (1778-1850); Joyce Kilmer, U.S. poet (1886-1918); Ira Gershwin, U.S. lyricist of Broadway musicals and films (1896-1983); Gunnar Myrdal, Swedish economist and sociologist, Nobel laureate (1898-1987); Alfred Eisenstaedt, U.S. photojournalist (1898-1995); James Braddock, U.S. boxer (1905-1974); Peter Handke, Austrian novelist and playwright (1942--).

Thought For Today:

In dreams begins responsibility _ William Butler Yeats, Irish Nobel Prize-winning poet (1865-1939).