by Associated Press Saturday, September 20 by The Associated Press, Associated Press - 12 September 2014 18:43-04:00 Today is Saturday, September 20, the 263rd day of 2014. There are 102 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 480 B.C. - Greeks defeat Persians in naval battle of Salamis in Aegean Sea. 1519 - Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Spain on a voyage to find the western passage to Indonesia's Spice Islands. He is killed on the way, but his ship completes the first trip around the world. 1857 - Delhi in India, held by mutineers, is captured by the British after a three-month siege. 1870 - Italian troops enter Rome, completing the unification of Italy. Pope Pius IX refuses to accept the occupation of the city and declares himself a prisoner in the Vatican, a position maintained by his successors until 1929. 1881 - Chester A. Arthur is sworn in as the 21st president of the United States, succeeding James A. Garfield, who was assassinated. 1945 - All-India Congress Committee under Mohandas K. Gandhi and Pandit Nehru rejects British proposals for self-government, calling for full independence. 1955 - The U.S.S.R. grants sovereignty to East Germany. 1960 - Thirteen newly independent African nations and former British colony of Cyprus are admitted to United Nations. 1962 - Southern Rhodesia declares the Zimbabwe African People's Union illegal. 1963 - In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, U.S. President John F. Kennedy proposes a joint U.S.-Soviet expedition to the moon. 1967 - Israeli tank shelling sinks three Egyptian troop-carrying boats in the Suez Canal. Israel claims the ships violated the Egyptian-Israeli agreement, banning small craft navigation in the waterway. 1974 - Death toll is put at thousands as hurricane lashes Central American nation of Honduras. 1977 - Vietnam is admitted as 149th member of United Nations; the first wave of Southeast Asian "boat people" arrives in San Francisco under a new U.S. resettlement program. 1984 - A suicide car bomber attacks the U.S. Embassy annex in north Beirut, killing a dozen people. 1989 - Indian peacekeeping troops declare cease-fire in their two-year-old battle against Tamil guerrillas fighting for an independent nation in Sri Lanka's northeast. 1990 - The East German and West German parliaments each ratify the treaty governing the legal aspects of a German reunification. 1991 - Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, admits the central government has lost most of its political control over the Soviet republics. 1992 - French voters barely approve the Maastricht Treaty on European Union, by 51 percent. 1993 - Fearing the economy is sliding back toward recession, Japan's central bank cuts its key interest rate to a record low of 1.75 percent. 1994 - A pneumonic plague epidemic breaks out in Surat, an industrial city in western India, killing about 60 people. 1996 - Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's brother, Murtaza Bhutto, is killed, as are seven supporters, in a gunbattle with police outside his Karachi home. 1997 - Polish Solidarity gains against the governing ex-communist Democratic Leftist Alliance party in parliamentary elections. 1999 - Kosovo Liberation Army leaders and the NATO-led peacekeeping force sign an agreement to demilitarize the former rebel army and transform it into a 5,000-member civilian corps. 2001 - Minority Albanian rebels begin turning over the last of the arms they are willing to surrender to NATO in Macedonia and parliament starts to discuss constitutional amendments to give the Albanian minority greater rights. 2002 - A Chinese court sentences 15 followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement to prison for broadcasting protests of the government's crackdown on the movement. 2003 - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton attends a ceremony in Bosnia to officially open a museum and cemetery dedicated to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which Serb forces executed as many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys. 2004 - The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warns that more than 40 countries have the know-how to produce nuclear arms, while the United States and European Union urge Iran to heed international demands meant to curb its access to nuclear weapons technology. 2005 - President Hamid Karzai challenges the need for foreign military operations in Afghanistan such as airstrikes and house searches, saying they are no longer effective. 2006 - Coal mining accidents in Kazakhstan and Ukraine kill at least 45 workers, raising concerns about mine safety in the former Soviet republics. 2007 - Peruvian astronomers say that a meteorite crashed near Lake Titicaca over the weekend, a rare occurance that left an elliptical crater and magnetic rock fragments in an impact powerful enough to register on seismic charts. 2008 - A suicide truck bomb at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, kills 53 people including the Czech ambassador, and wounds 270 others. 2009 - President Barack Obama says the leader of reclusive North Korea is "pretty healthy and in control" of the impoverished communist country, an assessment Obama received from former President Bill Clinton who visited Pyongyang. 2010 - Genetically engineered salmon that grows twice as fast as the conventional fish appears to be safe, an advisory committee tells the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But they argue that more testing may be needed before it is served on dinner tables. 2011 - A suicide attacker with a bomb in his turban poses as a Taliban peace envoy and assassinates a former Afghan president who for the past year headed a government council seeking a political settlement with the insurgents. 2012 - Israel accuses its arch enemy Iran of being the biggest threat to the Middle East as the Jewish state seeks to deflect pressure at a U.N. nuclear meeting over its own undeclared possession of nuclear weapons. 2013 — Al-Qaida militants disguised in military uniforms launch car bomb attacks on three different security and military outposts in southern Yemen, killing 38 soldiers in the group's biggest attack in the country since last year. Today's Birthdays: Chulalongkorn, reformist king of Siam (1853-1910); Richard Griffith, Irish geologist/engineer (1784-1878); Upton Sinclair, U.S. novelist/activist (1878-1968); Leo Strauss, German philosopher (1899-1973); Anne Meara, U.S. actress/comedian (1929--); Sophia Loren, Italian film actress (1934--). Thought For Today: Men hate those to whom they have to lie — Victor Hugo, French author (1802-1885). News Topics: General news, Diplomacy, Treaties, War and unrest, Bombings, Government and politics, Accidents and disasters, Armed forces, Peacekeeping forces, Nuclear weapons, United Nations General Assembly Annual Meeting, Army, International relations, International agreements, Military and defense, Weapons of mass destruction, Events People, Places and Companies: Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Benazir Bhutto, Bill Clinton, Hamid Karzai, Barack Obama, Upton Sinclair, Anne Meara, Sophia Loren, Victor Hugo, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, United States, Italy, Israel, South Asia, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Asia, Central Asia, North America, Western Europe, Europe Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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