Today is the 261st day of 2013. There are 104 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1851: The New York Times newspaper publishes its first issue.

OTHER EVENTS

1544: Sweden’s King Gustavus I forms alliance with France to counter Denmark’s alliance with the Holy Roman Empire.

1759: The French formally surrender Quebec to the British.

1793: George Washington lays the US Capitol Building’s cornerstone in Washington.

1810: Chile declares its independence from Spain.

1850: US Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act, which allows slave owners to reclaim slaves who escaped to free states.

1927: The Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System — later CBS — debuts in the United States with a network of 16 radio stations.

1955: At least 166 people are killed, 100 missing and 1,000 injured due to destructive winds and floods in the central and northern Gulf Coast area of Mexico where Hurricane Hilda struck.

1973: East Germany, West Germany and The Bahamas are admitted to United Nations.

1975: Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst is captured by the FBI in San Francisco, 19 months after being kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and then becoming one of its members.

1978: Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim Kamel and Ambassador to United States Ashraf Ghorbal resign in protest of Egypt’s Camp David agreement with Israel.

1983: British adventurer George Meegan finishes a six-year-long walk from the southernmost tip of South America to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska; covering 30,605 kilometres (19,021 miles).

1993: A United Nations investigation finds Liberian army troops responsible for shooting, bludgeoning and mutilating more than 400 refugees, most of whom were women and children.

1994: US President Bill Clinton announces Haiti’s strongman Raoul Cedras has agreed to leave power by October 15 and permit US troops to enter the country.

2000: Three gangs of armed gunmen break into three jails in the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in separate incidents, freeing more than 200 inmates, many of them convicted and suspected drug traffickers.

2001: Letters postmarked in Trenton, New Jersey, that test positive for anthrax are sent to the New York Post and the US NBC broadcasting network anchor Tom Brokaw.

2007: While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, linguistic experts say.

2011: Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn breaks his silence four months after a New York hotel maid accused him of sexual assault, calling his encounter with the woman a “moral failing” he deeply regrets, but insisting in an interview on French television that no violence was involved.