Today is the 44th day of 2014. There are 321 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2011: President Hugo Chavez says that he has no intention of ceasing his efforts to make Venezuela a socialist country, and he expresses confidence that his allies would take the reins of his “Bolivarian Revolution” if he died or decided to step down.

OTHER EVENTS

1542: England’s Queen Catherine Howard is executed for treason on the orders of her husband Henry VIII.

1633: Italian astronomer Galileo arrives in Rome and is detained by Roman Catholic Inquisition.

1689: English Parliament adopts a Bill of Rights.

1914: The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, known as ASCAP, is founded in New York City.

1920: The League of Nations recognizes Switzerland’s neutrality.

1945: Allied forces capture Budapest, Hungary, in World War II. US warplanes firebomb Dresden, Germany, wiping out the city and killing more than 35,000 civilians.

1960: France explodes its first atomic bomb.

1961: UN Security Council urges use of force to prevent civil war in the Congo.

1968: Ten thousand US troops are in process of being transported to South Vietnam on speed-up basis as fighting increases in that country.

1976: Nigerian junta leader General Murtala Ramat Muhammad is assassinated in a coup attempt.

1989: Soviet Red Army leaves Afghan capital of Kabul.

1990: Britain, France, Soviet Union, United States and two Germanys announce two-stage plan for talks leading to German reunification.

1992: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat claims tape in which he purportedly made slanderous comments about Jews was doctored.

1995: Peru announces it has captured the last Ecuadorean stronghold in Peruvian territory and declares a unilateral ceasefire in the Andean border war.

1996: Israeli troops seal off the West Bank and Gaza to prevent terrorist attacks. The restrictions last for years.

1998: Nigerian-led peacekeepers trying to oust Sierra Leone’s military government capture the parliament building in Freetown.

1999: Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire suspected of being behind the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, is reported to have disappeared from his base in Afghanistan.

2001: A strong earthquake rattles El Salvador, sending tremors through the Central American country still recovering from a January quake that killed hundreds.

2002: John Walker Lindh, a US citizen captured fighting alongside Afghanistan’s deposed Taliban militia, pleads not guilty to 10 counts of conspiring to kill Americans and abetting terrorist groups.

2004: Chechnya’s exiled former President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, wanted by Russia for terrorism and ties to al-Qaeda, is assassinated when a bomb blows apart his car as he leaves a mosque in Doha, Qatar. Yandarbiyev’s 13-year-old son is critically wounded.

2006: Denmark’s prime minister says the country’s image in the Muslim world has been tainted by false images and rumours in the Prophet Muhammed drawing controversy and insists the country is tolerant and open to all faiths.

2007: North Korea agrees with US and four regional powers on nuclear disarmament plan.

2008: One of the world’s most wanted and elusive terrorists, Imad Mughniyeh, is killed by a car bomb in Syria nearly 15 years after dropping almost entirely from sight. Iran and the militant group Hezbollah blame Israel, which denies a role.

2013: A weary Pope Benedict XVI begins a long farewell to his flock, celebrating his final public Mass as pontiff.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Charles Maurice Talleyrand-Perigord, French statesman (1754-1838); Eileen Farrell, US soprano (1920-2002); Kim Novak, US actress (1933-); Stockard Channing, US actress (1944-); Jerry Springer, US talk show host (1944-); Peter Gabriel, British singer (1950-); Robbie Williams, British singer (1974-)

—AP