Today is the 104th day of 2014. There are 261 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1993: On International Women’s Day, a Chinese newspaper asks 100 women what they would like to be. Sixty say they want to be men.

OTHER EVENTS:

1629: Peace of Susa ends war between England and France.

1775: The first American society for the abolition of slavery is organised by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.

1828: The first edition of Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language is published.

1834: Republican uprising in France is crushed by army under Adolphe Thiers.

1849: Hungarians proclaim independence from Hapsburg empire with Lajos Kossuth as Governor-President. The rebellion is put down by Russian troops in August.

1865: US President Abraham Lincoln is shot by actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, and dies the following morning.

1890: Delegates to Washington Conference of American States create what is to become the Pan-American Union; that North, South and Central America are all American nations.

1910: US President William Howard Taft throws the first ball to start the major league baseball season.

1912: The British liner Titanic collides with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and begins sinking.

1931: King Alfonso XIII flees after Republicans win elections, and Alcala Zamora becomes president of provisional government.

1939: John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath is published.

1945: US bombers pound Tokyo and Japan’s Imperial Palace in World War II.

1956 Ampex Corp demonstrates its first commercial videotape recorder.

1970: US Apollo 13 spacecraft heads back to Earth after a moon mission that was aborted because of mechanical problems.

1981: Columbia, America’s first operational space shuttle, lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California after its first test flight.

1987: Syrian troops deploy at outskirts of Lebanese port city of Sidon — the farthest south they have been since Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

1988: Soviet Union signs accord to end its intervention in Afghanistan and to allow Red Army to start troop withdrawal.

1990: Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis says Lithuania will not revoke its declaration of independence, despite Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s threat of an economic embargo.

1991: US, British and French aircraft drop tons of supplies to Iraqi Kurdish refugees stranded on the Turkish and Iranian borders.

1992: UN warns Iraq it risks military confrontation by moving missiles to Kurdish areas.

1994: Two US fighter planes shoot down two US helicopters in northern Iraq, killing all 26 on board.

1995: The UN Security Council votes to ease sanctions on Iraq, giving it easier terms in trading oil for food.

1996: Israeli aircraft bombard guerrilla strongholds in Beirut and southern Lebanon, doubling the tide of refugees to 400,000 and provoking guerrilla vows to turn northern Israel into a “fiery hell”.

1997: Hundreds of Iranian students clash with government troops outside the German Embassy in the first violence since a Berlin court blamed Iran for a 1992 assassination.

1998: The Irish government frees nine Irish Republican Army prisoners from a top-security prison in the hope of promoting the Northern Ireland peace accord.

2000: After years of delay, Russian lawmakers approve the START II treaty to scrap thousands of US and Russian nuclear warheads, clearing the way for further arms reductions.

2003: Indonesian prosecutors indict Abu Bakar Bashir, a 64-year-old radical Islamic cleric, on charges of treason for allegedly plotting to assassinate President Megawati Sukarnoputri and overthrow the Government.

2004: CIA Director George Tenet and FBI Director Robert Mueller go before the September 11 commission and say that enormous intelligence and law enforcement gaps that contributed to the attacks are being filled, but that it will take years more for America to build the needed systems to effectively combat terrorists.

2005: Afghan farmers challenge President Hamid Karzai’s plans to destroy the world’s largest narcotics industry, vowing to protect their opium crops from an eradication campaign led by US-trained drug police.

2006: Chad’s President Idriss Deby breaks off relations with neighbouring Sudan, threatens to expel 200,000 Darfur refugees and parades more than 250 captured rebels through the streets of the capital after a violent attempt to overthrow him.

2009: Pirates hijack four ships and seize more than 60 hostages off the coast of Somalia just days after the US Navy liberated the abducted American Captains Richard Phillips and killed three of the brigands holding him.

2010:- The head of the World Bank says it is time to stop using the term “Third World” to refer to developing countries and recognise they are an essential part of a new, fast-evolving international economy.

2011: Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi rolls defiantly through the streets of Tripoli, pumping his fists as he pokes through the sunroof of an SUV — the same day that NATO airstrikes shake the city.

2012: Egypt’s election commission disqualifies 10 presidential hopefuls, including Hosni Mubarak’s former spy chief and key Islamists, from running.

2013: Indonesian investigators begin working to determine what caused a new Lion Air passenger jet to miss a runway while landing on the resort island of Bali, crashing into the sea without causing any fatalities among the 108 on board.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Christian Huygens, Dutch mathematician-scientist (1629-1695); John Gielgud, English actor (1904-2000); Rod Steiger, US actor (1925-2002); Loretta Lynn, US country singer (1935- ); Julie Christie, British actress (1940- ); Brad Garrett, US actor (1960- ); Sarah Michelle Gellar, US actress (1977- ); Adrien Brody, US actor (1973- ); Anthony Michael Hall, US actor (1968- )

— AP