Today is Thursday, December 17, the 351st day of 2009. There are 14 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight

1903: Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful sustained powered flights by a heavier-than-air craft, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Other Notable Events

1538: Pope Paul III excommunicates England’s King Henry VIII.

1777: France recognises United States’ independence.

1908: The Ottoman Parliament holds first meeting.

1944: The United States (US) Army announces the end of its policy of excluding Japanese-Americans from the West Coast.

1948: The Dutch attack Indonesia, invade the republic’s capital of Yogyakarta, and arrest President Sukarno and other leaders.

1961: A fire sweeps through a circus tent at Niteroi, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killing 323 people, mostly children, and injuring 800. A disgruntled ex-employee admits to starting the fire.

1967: Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears while swimming at Portsea, Victoria.

1969: The US Air Force closes its “Project Blue Book” by concluding there was no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings.

1975: Lynette Fromme is sentenced to life in prison for her attempt on the life of US President Gerald Ford.

1979: In a case that aggravated racial tensions, Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance executive, is fatally beaten after a police chase in Miami. Four white police officers are later acquitted of charges stemming from his death.

1985: Uganda’s military government and its guerrilla rivals sign peace treaty dividing power and ending almost five years of civil war.

1990: Tens of thousands of students and workers strike across Romania, calling for government’s resignation as they commemorate the first anniversary of the uprising that ousted Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

1991: Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev agree to dissolve the Soviet Union and proclaim a new commonwealth on New Year’s Day.

1992: Egyption officials fight to save one of Cairo’s picturesque and historic quarters, the early Christian mecca at Babylon, that was rattled by an October earthquake.

1995: Elections in Russia give the parliamentary majority to communists and their allies.

1996: About 20 Tupac Amaru guerrillas seize the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima, Peru, take hundreds of diplomats and government officials hostage and demand the release of 300 imprisoned comrades.

1997: Thirty-four countries sign a treaty aimed at eradicating bribery in international business.

2002: The Congolese government and the country’s main rebel groups sign a peace accord in Pretoria, South Africa in hopes of ending Congo’s four-year-old civil war.

2003: The US and four Central American nations — Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua — reach a free trade agreement. CAFTA calls for eliminating tariffs on all industrial goods over 10 years and phasing out most agricultural trade barriers over 18 years.

2005: Anti-globalisation protesters in Hong Kong armed with bamboo sticks rush police and try to storm the convention centre where trade accord negotiations are being held. At least 41 people are injured and 900 detained after the worst street violence in Hong Kong in decades.

2006: Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms burst into Red Crescent offices in Baghdad and kidnap more than two dozen people at the humanitarian organisation.

2007: A gang-rape victim sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her is pardoned by the Saudi king after the case sparked rare criticism from the US, the kingdom’s top ally.

Today’s Birthdays

Domenico Cimarosa, Italian composer (1749-1801); Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer (1770-1827); Ford Madox Ford, English author (1873-1939); Arthur Fielder, US conductor (1894-1979); Erskine Caldwell, US author (1903-1987); Kerry Packer, Australian media magnate (1937-2005); William Safire, US newspaper columnist (1929-2009).