Highlights in history on this date:

1699 - Treaty is signed by Denmark, Russia, Saxony and Poland for partition of Swedish Empire.

1718 - English pirate Edward Teach _ better known as "Blackbeard" _ is killed during a battle off the Virginia coast.

1892 - Belgians suppress uprising of Arab slave holders in Upper Congo.

1906 - The "SOS" distress signal is adopted at the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin.

1915 - British and Turks battle indecisively at Tsiphon, Mesopotamia.

1935 - The flying boat, The China Clipper, leaves San Francisco on the first trans-Pacific airmail flight.

1943 - Lebanon is granted independence after two decades of French mandate rule; Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, and China's Chiang Kai-shek agree in Cairo, Egypt, on measures to defeat Japan in World War II.

1947 - Iran Assembly nullifies oil agreements with Soviet Union.

1962 - Soviet Union announces end of combat-readiness alert of its armed forces imposed at start of Cuban missile crisis.

1963 - U.S. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated as he rides in motorcade in Dallas, Texas. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson becomes the 36th president.

1967 - The U.N. Security Council approves Resolution 242, which calls for Israel to withdraw from territories it captured in 1967 Six Day War, and implicitly calls on adversaries to recognize Israel's right to exist.

1972 - U.S. President Richard Nixon lifts 22-year-old ban on American travel to China.

1974 - U.N. General Assembly gives the Palestine Liberation Organization observer status.

1977 - The British and French supersonic airliner Concorde begins service out of New York's Kennedy International Airport after lengthy dispute over noise levels.

1986 - Iranian surface-to-surface missile hits residential area in Iraqi capital of Baghdad, wounding 20 civilians.

1988 - South African government announces it has joined Cuba and Angola in endorsing plan to remove Cuban troops from Angola.

1989 - Lebanese President Rene Mouawad is assassinated.

1990 - British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, after being defeated by John Major in a ballot for Conservative Party leader, resigns after 11 1/2 years in office.

1991 - Ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide meets with a group of Haitian legislators to negotiate an end to Haiti's constitutional crisis. It is the first meeting between the two sides since Aristide's overthrow in a military-led coup

1992 - NATO warships begin a blockade of Yugoslav territorial waters and a cease-fire virtually collapses.

1993 - Mexican Senate approves North American Free Trade Agreement.

1994 - Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi is placed under investigation in a bribery probe.

1995 - Boosting the Balkan peace accord, the U.N. Security Council suspends economic sanctions against Serbia and begins lifting the arms embargo against republics of the former Yugoslavia.

1996 - President Alberto Fujimori of Peru announces the purchase of 12 MiG-29 warplanes, but denies trying to start an arms race with Ecuador.

1997 - Gunmen kidnap five aid workers from the U.N. and European Union in Somalia. They are released unharmed three days later.

1998 - Albanians ratify their country's first post-Communist constitution in a referendum.

1999 - Abdelkader Hachani, a moderate leader of Algeria's banned Islamic Salvation Front, is fatally shot in Algiers.

2000 - Four Palestinians are killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli troops near a Jewish settlement.

2001 - The Turkish Parliament approves revisions to the country's 75-year-old civil code to recognize men and women as equal before the law.

2002 - Officials cancel the Miss World pageant in Nigeria and move it instead to London after news that the African nation will host the event sparks deadly riots.

2004 - Opposition supporters gather to protest alleged fraud in Ukraine's presidential runoff, which European monitors say was marred by official interference and suspiciously high turnout figures.

2005 - Conservative Angela Merkel takes power as Germany's first female chancellor and the country's first leader to grow up under communism in the Soviet-occupied East.

2006 - Nepal celebrates the end of a bloody 10-year communist insurgency by declaring a public holiday, and the international community hails the deal under which communist rebels will join an interim government.

2007 - A transport strike that has crippled France for nine days in open defiance of President Nicolas Sarkozy's reform agenda collapses as rail workers around the country vote "yes" to return to the job.

Today's Birthdays:

Charles de Gaulle, French general-statesman (1890-1970); Benjamin Britten, English composer (1913-1976); Lew Hoad, Australian tennis champion (1934-1994); Shane Gould, Australian Olympic swimming champion (1956--); Jamie Lee Curtis, U.S. actress (1958--); Mariel Hemingway, U.S. actress (1961--); Boris Becker, German tennis professional and Wimbledon champion (1967--); Scarlett Johansson, U.S. actress (1984--).

Thought For Today:

To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory _ Pierre Corneille, French dramatist (1606-1684).